


Special Ed

by chinashopbull



Category: Ed Edd n Eddy
Genre: Ableism, Abuse, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Assault, Autistic Character, Bullying, Child Neglect, Coming Out, Depression, Disability, Dissociation, Friends to Lovers, Gay Bashing, High School, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Medication, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm, Slurs, Suicidal Thoughts, Whump, systemic complicity toward bullying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 09:56:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13901583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chinashopbull/pseuds/chinashopbull
Summary: Being small-boned and embarrassingly frail may, in fact, be worth it, if it means getting to beheldlike this, after a week likethis.





	Special Ed

**Author's Note:**

> • This fic does NOT take into account certain character/relationship developments from the end of the movie, or it assumes those developments did not last long-term. If you’re super invested in the idea of Kevin as a good guy, you’ll probably be disappointed with this one. 
> 
> • I haven’t been in high school since the early 2000s, so if any of the administrivia or culture thereof seems dated, well, that’s because it is. 
> 
> • **Tags serve as warnings.** Please heed.

Eddward has reached a plateau with his current therapist, and fears she may not be up to the task of assisting him for the duration of tenth grade, or even for the duration of September. It’s only been two weeks since summer ended and he’s already burned through all of the mental reserves he built up so carefully over vacation. At this rate he’ll immolate himself before Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, now is not an ideal time to let her go. Although Double D has become quite practiced at giving behavioral professionals The Gentle Letdown Speech, and although he has always been quick to find a replacement and continue pursuing psychological improvement, his parents have recently decided to take “a more active role” in his mental health, much to his mental health’s detriment.

Perhaps they watched a documentary on teen prescription drug abuse. Perhaps they believe he hasn’t noticed them surreptitiously counting the pills left in his bottle at least every other day. Double D is perfectly aware of the addictive properties of benzodiazepines, and is even more cautious with his dosing than is his already-conservative psychiatrist. Explaining this to Mother and Father, both verbally and in writing, has led not to progress but to a brick wall. Perhaps they misinterpreted his desire to soothe their fears as a defensive gesture. 

He continues to request refills because, frankly, they work. The lorazepam helped when nothing else did. And the clonazepam makes him less groggy than the lorazepam did (and, unlike the latter, the former doesn’t cause him to experience auditory hallucinations as it wears off). But clonazepam has an illicit street name that his parents have heard of, and regardless of Double D’s extreme care and repeated reassurances, that makes them nearly anxious enough to require the medication themselves. 

At their last appointment, he asked his current psychiatrist if he could switch to something more… obscure. When asked why, he told her the truth, and the psychiatrist refused, taking up the rest of their 15 minutes with a rousing speech about not allowing untrained, unqualified third parties to interfere with his medical care, especially since his current regimen _works for him._

Easily said, when one doesn’t have to look the other way in humiliated silence while one’s mother puts her fingers all over one’s pills. He can practically taste her fingerprints and bacteria when he medicates now. It is… less than optimal.

Double D’s current therapist is the mother of a teenager herself, and has always been less inclined to show empathy for his experiences than she is to explain to him what his own mother is probably going through and why he should work harder to consider and accommodate her feelings. 

Intellectually, he knows that as the offspring, it is not his role to provide emotional support to his parents at the cost of his own well-being. He would nontheless appreciate and benefit from hearing someone else say this to him, out loud. Someone with authority. A _lot_ of authority. Someone whose mere say-so bears an inordinate amount of self-evident strength, who is difficult for his mind to argue with.

Curse the inherent weaknesses of belonging to a hypersocial species.

And of having a naturally deferential personality.

 _And_ of having insufficient social outlet.

He misses the other two.

Eddy he’s been missing for longer. There was a fleeting, shining moment toward the end of junior high when Eddy had finally discovered that effective business practices could be _learned._ Double D had escorted him, with immeasurable pride and pleasure (and, if he may say so himself, a certain enviable _gallantry_ so gracious as to make anyone of any gender feel welcomed), around both the library and some of the more enlightened parts of the internet. Why, he even managed to introduce Eddy to the concept of someday earning an MBA with such understated persuasion that Eddy put on his Careful Consideration face rather than his Nah Too Much Effort face. It was glorious, for nearly a month.

Then came the distractions of summer, which was an understandable (if not entirely excusable) reason to temporarily wander away from personal studies. None of them was particularly looking forward to learning an entirely new social system in high school, or to being at the bottom rung again, and Eddy unilaterally decided that this was going to be The Most Epic Summer Ever. 

This quest had the opposite effect of stressing them all out due to the added pressure, but to be fair, besides that and their first disastrous foray into the world of underage imbibing, The Most Epic Summer Ever turned out more or less exactly like all previous summers, with their perfectly normal degree of epicness.

That was all Double D required for a collection of memories that would seem even happier when viewed through the rosy lens of nostalgia.

(Oh but wait, of course, how could he ever forget, there was also the fateful day in mid-July when one of the specialists Double D’s parents were taking him to diagnosed him at long last with autism, kickstarting an intensive bout of research which left him exhausted, satisfied, and feeling, for the first time, a sense of compassionate understanding for the outside world. Eureeka! But of course everything is strange and confusing and noisy noisy noisy! It suffers from a distinct lack of autism! Poor world. Alas, there is no cure for neurotypicality.)

At the start of freshman year, Double D made a valiant attempt to usher Eddy back toward his business-and-marketing studies. Eddy waffled and dodged the issue for a little while before becoming distracted by — of all things — _sports._

It turns out that Eddy had some kind of hidden talent for lacrosse, and although it was questionable whether he had any _affection_ for the game, he soon learned that being on a high school athletics team resulted in social capital net gain. From there, Eddy’s interest in social capital rapidly superceded his interest in fiscal capital. And in jawbreakers.

While sacrificing time together for the sake of practices and games and such was an expected part of any competitive sports career, Double D and Ed began seeing less and less of their leader-in-grift, even when there were no official lacrosse events on the schedule.

Eddy had _new_ friends. Friends who had a wide variety of given names.

All of whom expected Eddy, with his newly minted status as One Of Them and his naturally abrasive personality, to dive headfirst into the “mean jock” stereotype. Eddy, in an attempt to understand and provide for his customers’ needs, obliged like the enthusiastic capitalist he’s always been.

He stopped just shy of physical assault, but the first time he called Double D the R-word where their peers could hear him, Eddward understood that a line had been drawn. 

So he was not surprised when, the next week, Kevin slammed Double D against the wall in the locker room, gave him a purple nurple, and while Eddy had enough common decency to refrain from laughing along, he didn’t have enough to step in. He just watched, dispassionately. Double D himself shows far more emotion when looking at a microscope slide. 

Eddy and Kevin, despite not even participating in the same sports (Kevin’s in soccer), had evidently entered into some sort of mutual non-interference pact, like two predators with adjacent territories.

The law of the jungle is absolute.

It stayed that way all through freshman year, and this past summer has been an uncomfortable and political time, throwing Eddy into palpable emotional turmoil every time Kevin drifted past the scene and saw the Eds all together. 

Double D found himself alone with Ed, or just plain alone, on more days than in any other summer he can recall. It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy one-on-one time with Ed, it’s just… they’re both “follower” types, so they don’t tend to _do_ very much. Often it was peaceful and pleasant, and it certainly led to less physical pain than they both regularly suffered under Eddy’s (mis)guidance, but Double D still misses the constant stimulation of puzzling out how to make Eddy’s schemes a reality.

Eddy still comes over in evenings and on weekends to drag them out into the world, but only if he has nothing more alluring to do, and it’s aimless compared to the old days. Ed is the only one who still has any particular interest in jawbreakers, and unless someone else mentions them first, he rarely thinks of them.

So Eddy’s been gone, in a certain sense, for quite some time. 

Double D misses Ed for a very different reason.

The teachers spent all of freshman year steadily losing patience and interest in Ed’s poor academic performance, and shuttling him off to one remedial class after another. This year, they’ve decided to skip the headache of trying to help him learn, and he’s been banished to the special education room. In the basement.

The room itself is actually quite lovely. Colorful, quiet, insulated from the relentless crush of the overcrowded hallways above with their relentlessly cruel social squabbles. The lone teacher and her three aides also seem like lovely people. Double D and his parents had a tour and meet-and-greet there before the school year started, before deciding that although the environment would be _far_ preferable, Double D would have a better chance of receiving at least _some_ degree of academic challenge upstairs among the wolves and the AP classes.

Ed didn’t have the luxury of a choice. Even if his mother had gone to bat for him, the administration was already prepared to put its foot down — and Double D’s never known her to go to bat for her son about _anything,_ so who knows if she’d even be any good at it.

Ed tells him about it his class sometimes, and laughs every time he gets to use the phrase “special ed”. Double D’s fairly certain that Ed understands the room hasn’t actually been named after him, and is simply choosing to ignore that reality for his own amusement. It’s… not a terrible way to go through life, Double D decides, and manages to almost fully suppress his internal BUT GRAMMAR cringing so it won’t interfere with his friend’s happiness.

The change is still new, but already Double D misses seeing him during the day, even if it’s only a glimpse of his acne-scabbed melon over the top of the crowd at the far end of the hall. It was a small but crucial reassurance that _someone_ in this crucible was on Double D’s side (if not fully cognizant of his various intersecting plights).

Someone physically imposing, no less, who could deter potential assault simply by standing nearby, by visibly Being His Friend.

And yes, this is purely enlightened self-interest at work, but that is an aspect of Ed’s company Double D longs for quite fervently. Especially now.

 _Right_ now.

Kevin isn’t a large boy, but just as in nature, aggression often counts for more than size.

Kevin isn’t a smart boy, either, but is practical enough not to leave bruises above the ribs. And he’s quick enough to vanish the moment that the sound of high heels clicking on the hallway floor announces the approach of a teacher.

Double D stays on the ground, his back pressed against someone else’s locker, as the hall clears out and the teacher rounds the corner. He’s the only one left. The bell must have rung. He must not have heard it over the ringing in his ears.

“Eddward? Do you need to go to the nurse again?”

“Indubitably,” wheezes Double D. “I require assistance, please,” he says, reaching out a hand, and she pulls him to his feet without much effort. Someday he’ll get around to gaining weight.

He won’t lift his shirt for the nurse so she can see the bruising Kevin left. It’s not that he’s ashamed of being assaulted, or of being unable to defend himself in any meaningful way. But there are… _other things_ on his skin, there, that he’d rather not share with others. Things that would warrant phone calls. 

Reasonably, she assumes his pain is internally caused, gives him a Tums, and sends him on to trigonometry. 

Not even a month into the school year and this is his fourth nurse visit, up 400% over last year’s rate. They already suspect him of either faking or being on the verge of death. If this keeps up, he may be forced out of class and down into the basement with Ed, if only to protect his body from the rigors of being among the general populace. 

He’s only opposed to the idea because this year he can finally begin accruing college credits, and he can’t continue his AP coursework if he’s being “tutored” at a rate more appropriate to Ed’s learning ability.

And because Mother and Father would have to be involved in the decision. That is exactly the last thing he needs. 

One more visit to the nurse, and the school may be sending them a letter anyway.

He spends the rest of the day in a dissociated haze, poking the self-inflicted scabs and Kevin-inflicted bruises through his shirt. One expects to be intimately familiar with pain, and when it doesn’t _hurt_ the way it should, it makes for a novel sensation.

Double D “wakes up”, as it were, when he’s midway home and Ed taps him on top of the skull, none too gently. “Slow-roasted to a crispy goodness,” says Ed.

Double D checks to make sure his hat’s still in place. (Thank goodness he was able to get special dispensation to be allowed to wear it in class! The system, while a far cry from ideal, is neither completely without merit nor entirely against a just and fair consideration of individual circumstance… at least on occasion.) “I’m sorry, Ed,” he says. “I seem to have misplaced the majority of the afternoon. Um. You were saying?”

“It’s hot in Topeka.”

“That’s just as well, then, if I wasn’t listening anyway.”

“I want hamburgers!”

“I’m afraid I don’t have any money today.” Kevin saw to that.

Ed reaches into his coat pocket and produces a fistful of crumpled ones and fives. “Bippity-boppity-boo.” He bumps his shoulder into Double D’s, accidentally knocking him against the fence. “I want hamburgers.”

“You’ll just have to go get your hamburgers on your own,” says Double D, wrapping a forearm around his sore ribs. “I have no appetite. In fact I’m feeling on the queasy side. I think those antacids were expired.”

Ed grabs the back of Double D’s shirt. _“You_ can be my date,” he announces, and laughing he pulls Double D down the side street that leads to McDonald’s.

“Ed, _please._ The reconstituted protein sludge they use in those patties can hardly be described as food! Even the cafeteria sources more wholesome ingredients! And the bathroom is so unsanitary! If you really want hamburgers, can’t we get them someplace else?”

“Mickey-D with Double D!”

“Aaagh.”

 

Perhaps it’s the so-called “meat” contaminating his intestinal tract, but Eddward’s dreams that night are singularly unpleasant. So much so that the moment he wakes up he forgets what they were, but his mind seems to be on fire and his skin is covered in cold goosebumps — ugh, goosebumps, it’s like turning into a lizard. If his flesh isn’t his own, what’s left in the world to rely on?

That isn’t the panic talking; he’s always felt this way about goosebumps. Or weird skin-textures in general. It’s truly a wonder that puberty didn’t destroy him as much as he’d expected it to. (Perhaps because, in many ways, it’s barely even touched him.)

It’s 4:17am and dark. He desperately needs to shower, but the bathroom is directly next to his parents’ bedroom and he’s sure to wake up Mother if he starts the water now. 

The idea of doing so piggy-backs on the stress from his nightmare and causes his bruised ribcage to collapse in on itself, crushing the breath out of him.

This is not literally true. He knows it’s not, and consciously reminds himself so in very clear language. Merely another panic attack. No real harm. He’s not really dying. Double D pats his ribs with both palms; there, see? Still intact. Not really dying.

He is really wheezing, however, and his pulse is really far too rapid. Leaking sweat spreads through his pajamas and adheres the fabric to his body. The sensation reminds him of Kevin’s hands holding him in place for another knee to the solar plexus, and Double D jumps out of bed, ripping the garments off as quickly as he can.

It’s too late for deep breathing techniques to have any effect. Medication. Medication is the next step in the harm-reduction plan. 

…He places his hand on his desk, over the MEDICATIONS label adhered there. The bottle is missing.

The _bottle_ is _missing._

_(serial toucher on the loose)_

His heart rate doubles, and hurts, and he begins panting, squinting one by one at the labels on the bottles that are still here. Fluoxetine, check. Gabapentin, check. Melatonin, check. Fish oil, check. No clonazepam. _For the love of all that medical science has accomplished in the last fifty years, where is the clonazepam?_

Hyperventilating, he turns wild eyes on his backpack. Perhaps he brought it to school with him and forgot to return it to its proper place on the desk? He checks the pouch where he keeps his medications, first-aid kit, and hand sanitizer. No luck. Then he checks all the other segments of his backpack just in case, even though it’s completely irrational to think he might’ve put the pills anywhere but the large velcro pouch in the front zippered portion.

Finally he’s standing at his bedroom door, touching the doorknob and letting it go over and over again, the uncertainty ripping his _brain_ in half.

Wake up Mother and Father to ask if they’ve seen his pills? Or move on to the next step in harm reduction?

Oh, what’s the use. His parents won’t know where his pills went, and he’ll only feel terrible for waking them. And possibly receive a brief lecture on the importance of maintaining high standards of organization.

He checks his backpack once more, emptying every item in every pouch into neat stacks on the bedroom carpet. 

There’s a sticky note on his chemistry notebook. He didn’t have chemistry today.

_Dear Eddward,_  
_Your Father & I thought it best to help monitor your medication intake. Ask us if you need your pills.  
_Mother__

Double D blinks slowly at the sticky note. “Monitor,” she wrote. 

“You misspoke, Mother,” says Double D to the small square of yellow paper. “The word you were looking for is ‘control’.”

He lowers the note and begins folding it carefully.

“And what exactly do you mean by _’if’_ I need my pills? The psychiatrist wouldn’t have prescribed them, and I wouldn’t continue taking them, if I didn’t need them already. You don’t have any kind of medical degree or license, Mother. And you know even less about my issues than Dr. Sylvia does, and she’s _terrible.”_

The sticky note has become an improbably small paper crane. Double D rises to his feet, situates the tiny origami on his desk where the pill bottle would normally sit.

“Well, so much for my New Year’s Resolution to stop talking to myself.”

His skin is prickling with sweat and overheat, pressure-cooking all his muscles and internal organs into a useless jelly inside his body. He assumes it’s a panic attack or similar, but picks up the empty plastic dish-bin he uses for specimen cleaning and keeps it within easy reach, in case his assumption is wrong and his stomach surprises him with a graphic reminder of how atrocious fast food really is.

The bedroom ceiling has never looked so far away.

Double D keeps three emergency kits in repurposed plastic pencil-boxes on his closet shelf. The boxes are identical on the outside except for the color of the lid. He hasn’t labeled them. This was intentional.

The red one is a first-aid kit, of course. The blue one he assembled at the advice of a previous therapist — she called it a “happy box”, and Double D adopted the childish nomenclature for the sake of convenience. The purple one on the far end is in case the happy box fails, and nobody at all advised it. He tries very hard not to have a name for it, but to his chagrin often finds himself half-consciously referring to it as “the unhappy box”.

He pulls down the purple and the blue and, after stuffing a clean towel under the door in case Mother or Father wakes up and notices his light shining through the doorcrack, switches on his desk lamp.

Blue first. Cool, calming blue. Clear skies. Mediterranean oceans. Elderberry borer beetles. 

Even as he opens it, he can tell it isn’t going to work. It’s only through loyalty to the system that he persists in rooting through the collection of fidget toys, bottled chemicals from favorite experiments, his old hat, his lucky staple remover, his favorite microscope slides from early childhood. Oh, and his old Audobon Field Guide to Arthropods of North America. He picks up the thick paperback with some interest; he forgot he included this in the collection. 

When he thumbs it open, however, his eyes are too blurry to decipher the tiny text, and what good are full-color photographs without vital taxonomic information to elucidate them?

Repacking the happy box in the proper order centers him more than its contents did. He clicks the lid shut and holds onto the edge of his desk as he breathes his way through a wave of dizziness and ends up… floating.

He blinks and tilts his head slowly. The cartilage between his bones has been replaced with molasses. Smooth plastic slides across his fingertips.

He rather likes purple. It’s a good strong color. Balanced. Royal. Selfless. Ambiguously gendered.

The nitrile gloves are blue and the surgical mask is no particular color at all. He remembers that these important silvery bits here are very sharp, and paper-thin, and they have a name, and they’re not quarters but a large part of him believes he is holding the edge of a dull old quarter against his belly-skin with his shirt-hem hucked up under his chin and yet

Quarters are important because quarters mean jawbreakers and the jawbreakers are good but not as good as that common goal that quest that hunt like a family of wolves relay-racing against a noble buffalo and can you imagine how much happier Wile E. Coyote could’ve been if his two best friends were there to help him scheme like it wouldn’t even matter that he never caught the bird and it would still hurt to fall off the cliff it would still hurt to slam down in that distant puff of smoke but the moment _after_ impact and the moment after that and the one after that would be a whole different story and you could laugh together on your way back out of the emergency room because you _survived_ and you’re all _together_ and whose crazy idea was that anyway but oh wasn’t it a great ride though and the plastic barcodes around your wrists would bind your covenant because when you bleed with someone that makes you brothers doesn’t… it…? …

A lapse, as Double D drifts, in a kind of insulated, purged silence.

That quiet, black, buzzing-vibrating feeling in his head, like lightning clouds filling his ears, cottony and sparky at the same time. 

That feeling like when you very first begin to regain consciousness after _almost_ fainting. Standing up too quickly. Headrush.

His muscles are rock, are pure ache. People often accuse him of not having any muscles, but if that were true then they wouldn’t be able to hurt like this.

He’s slumped in his desk chair, deeply, posture awful; that certainly can’t be helping his back. He straightens, mechanically observes first-aid protocol (the unhappy box includes a secondary first-aid kit of its own), wipes up the blood that escaped onto the furniture, and buries all the evidence very carefully in the wastebasket before repacking his supplies and returning them to the closet shelf. Then he retreats, slowly, to his bed, and lies on his side without taking off his slippers.

His thoughts downshift to their lowest, slowest gear.

…Well, he’s certainly not panicking anymore. He’s just.

Exhausted to his _core._ Or would be, if there were enough of him left to _have_ a core.

It is, in fact, possible to be too tired to dissociate. That is interesting. He’ll have to look this up later, find out if this is a common occurrence or a first sign of some obscure terminal brain disease.

…Curse your efficacy, unhappy purple box.

 

Kevin doesn’t come for another pound of flesh the next day. The soccer team has practice.

Eddy disappears as soon as the final bell rings. One of his _new_ friends just got a car. (Double D hasn’t even managed to convince Mother and Father to sign him up for driver’s ed yet. They feel it’s prudent to “get his anxiety under control” first. He suspects he’s going to have no choice but to wait until he’s 18 and then most likely have to fund the classes himself… and sneak out in order to attend them… and possibly find some other licensed adult to supervise him through his learner’s permit practice time.)

Ed is waiting for him by the flagpole, laughing as though that’s simply what his diaphragm prefers over normal breathing, and waves. “Hiya, Double D!”

“Hello, Ed,” he says, without much feeling. There’s rarely much feeling to spare the day after a panic attack, much less a dissociative episode on top of it. It seems to dampen his depth perception and the way his brain processes colors, as well. Ed’s coat looks grey.

Ed falls into step next to him. One of his shoes has a squeak today.

“Sarah says I gotta clean my room.” 

“I’m sorry to hear that, Ed.”

“She says I gotta clean stuff real good or Mom will get in trouble.”

“Is child protective services finally responding to all the complaints?”

“GRANDMA’S COMING! She is coming for the whole weekend, Double D. THE WHOLE WEEKEND.”

“Oh.” Double D pulls down on the hem of his shirt. “That certainly is a daunting prospect.” His shirt always feels as though it’s riding up the day after he… the day after there’s something new beneath it that he’d rather people not see. It takes effort not to poke at the gauze taped to his belly, through his shirt. He feels certain people can see the odd shape under the fabric, can hear the rustle of tape and gauze against cotton, can tell what it is and what he’s been doing to himself.

“Double D!” Ed grabs his shoulders, stopping them both, and gives him a shake. Double D has been mostly numb to this kind of treatment (coming from Ed, anyway) for years. “I’m not in my happy place, Double D!”

Oh dear. He has that frantic face, the one he puts on when he’s desperate for Double D’s attention. The one Double D cannot bring himself to refuse, ever, regardless of how badly he needs a nap.

“Do you want my help cleaning your room, Ed?”

Ed chomps his lower lip hard and his eyes wobble with tears. Some people wear their emotions on their sleeves. Ed flies his like a banner attached to the tail of a small aircraft.

Double D sighs, mostly out of habit. “Very well,” he says.

“Yaaay! Cleaning game! Chim-chimminee!”

“You can put me down, Ed.”

Ed throws him across a shoulder and takes off at a sprint. “It’s a jolly holiday!” 

Well, he always did have a smooth gait that makes for a surprisingly luxurious ride. Double D goes limp across Ed’s shoulder and watches the distance grow between them and school. As the distance increases, so does his relief.

Curse those who have managed to turn Double D’s affections against a sanctioned institution of learning.

He rests his face, upside-down, against Ed’s back, the familiar texture of that old jacket. He’s heard a theory that “comfort” is nothing more than the emotion experienced when dealing with what’s familiar. That would explain some things. Such as the way he’s grinding his forehead into the extremely soiled fabric of Ed’s old jacket and finding both it, and the solid mass of Ed behind it, profoundly reassuring, rather than a reason to declare quarantine.

Double D fails to realize he’s expecting to meet strong resistance or avoidance for help with Ed’s chore (leaving him to complete the task himself) until it doesn’t happen. Ed is surprisingly agreeable and industrious. Perhaps fear of repurcussion gives him the extra edge of focus to stick with it. Or perhaps Ed is one of the many “closeted clean-freaks” that Double D has fondly theorized about.

Or perhaps Double D has spent his whole life conflating Ed’s behavior with Eddy’s, and is still sorting them out. Eddy’s always been the lazy one, the delegator, the “supervisor”. 

Ed’s enthusiasm is limitless; it just needs some gentle nudging and course-correction every now and then to keep on task.

Double D whistles through his precautionary surgical mask for a while, and Ed tries to make it a duet, but succeeds only in producing an entirely different melody (if one could call it that) by humming through puckered lips. He then proceeds to dance a stunningly dignified and elegant waltz of sorts with the broom. The broom seems to be leading. Ed curtsies to it when the music in his head winds to a close, and Double D covers his already-covered mouth with a hand and laughs. “Lovable oaf.”

“Who’s the fairest of them all!” And he passionately, loudly kisses the broom handle, then resumes sweeping.

Sure, the place can’t become exactly sparkling, and there’s not much they can do about the extensive mold problem aside from using some diluted bleach as a band-aid fix, but after perhaps an hour and a half they’ve managed to rectify five or six of the more egregious health-code violations.

They don’t run into any real problems until they’re stripping his bed so the sheets can be washed. More than one arthropod goes scurrying at the disturbance. Double D leans forward and squints, curiosity outweighing dismay now that he’s been uncovering unpleasant surprises for the past several hours. Hm… brown; large round thoraxes… They look like… like…

 _Oh dear LORD!_ Double D drops the blanket in stiff revulsion and stands there, gloved hands frozen in the air. “…Ed? Um, excuse me, please?” he says, very calmly.

“You’re excused! You’re welcome.”

“Do you have bug bites? On your arms perhaps?”

Ed blinks, then sheds his jacket and holds out his arms for inspection. “Clean and clear and under control,” he announces.

“Dear _lord!_ You look like a slice of pepperoni pizza! How far up do these _go?”_

Ed lifts the hem of his shirt.

“My god, you’re a _mess!_ You must fumigate immediately.” He stops. “Oh my _god,_ earlier today! You _picked me up!_ Now my clothes are probably _full_ of them!” He’s shaking now, staring at his gloves in agonized horror and trying desperately to remember the first steps of full quarantine lockdown protocol.

Ed’s unibrow squirms in confusion. “Do you need a napkin, Double D?”

“No! We need a full cleanse! A methoprene sprayer. Possibly a large flamethrower. These are _bedbugs,_ Ed! Do you know what that means?”

Ed pauses. Blinks. “I’m Henry the eighth I am!”

Curses curses curses. “Do you have… oh my word, how have your mother and sister not noticed? They’re probably all over the house!”

“I don’t go upstairs much, Double D.”

“…Oh. Right.” He leaves the bedroom, searches frantically among the bottles and mops and boxes and bags piled up against the wall. “Messy messy messy. You had fleas upstairs summer before last, didn’t you? I seem to remember Sarah carrying on about it—“

“I wore a flea collar for a whole month!” Ed says from the doorway, pleased as punch.

“Which I’m sure can’t have been very healthy—“

“I had some funny nightmares.”

“But what I’m saying is that if you dusted the house last year, then there might still be some — aha! Here,” he says, disinterring a half-full bag of diatomaceous earth from beneath some SCUBA gear that Double D feels quite certain no one in Ed’s family has ever used. “Everything that can go in the wash, we’ll put in the wash. Everything else, we need to cover with this. And I do mean everything.”

Ed looks unhappily at the bag, pulling at his lower lip.

“Trust me, Ed,” says Double D.

“Okie-dokie.”

 

After thoroughly dusting Ed’s room and most of the basement outside his door — and after coughing and wheezing until his entire chest is throbbing and raw — and after washing his own clothes in Ed’s machine while wrapped in nothing but an intense blush and a freshly laundered threadbare sheet, then changing back into his clothes and stuffing one last load of bedding into the machine, Double D spends about ten minutes making absolutely certain to impress upon Ed the importance of leaving the dust in place for several days, even though the chances of Ed proactively deciding to vacuum (prematurely or otherwise) are considerably slim.

Then he takes his leave to visit the public library. The first paper of the school year is due next week, and since it’s already far too late to get started on the right foot this year in a social sense, it’s still well within Double D’s capacity to begin with a strong GPA. And frankly, he needs a win, even if it’s just a finely crafted write-up for Comparative Lit. 

He gets sidetracked re-reading _The Great Gatsby,_ which he’s never cared for and isn’t on the syllabus, but which he’s sure would be useful for elucidating his main point about Kafka’s _Metamorphosis_ and Camus’ _The Stranger,_ if only he can re-find the salient details. 

An aide tells him the library is closing. 

“Oh dear, nine o’clock already?” he mutters, glancing up at the darkened windows. “Thank you, Susan. I’ll just be checking out these two for now, if you please.”

A strong but contemplative-feeling autumnal wind follows him home through the deep twilight. It’s fully dark by the time he reaches the cul-de-sac.

Double D hesitates at the end of his walkway, one hand on the mailbox. Prudence demands he retire to his bedroom immediately to begin his tried and true five-day research process which he has rigorously developed to produce the highest quality academic papers on deadline with a minimum of stress.

Prudence, however, has not been protecting him lately, from stress or anything else.

(And if he is also filled with dread at the thought of returning to his own bedroom when his freshest memory of it includes medication theft, a panic attack, and a self-harm episode, then that’s hardly a thing he needs fully admit, isn’t it?)

He gives his walkway a miss and continues on down the sidewalk, resisting the momentary urge to abandon his backpack on the ground by the mailbox. He may be a semi-suicidal wreck of his former self, but he isn’t an _animal,_ after all. 

When Double D reaches the old playground, he discards the backpack on the picnic table and takes a seat on the swings. The rubber flap pinches his posterior a lot more than it used to. There’s something poignant about that — how even his lack-of-a-rear-end has nonetheless managed to outgrow the trappings of childhood — and there’s something very 21st-century byronic about the act of sitting on a swing in the dark without actually swinging. And it’s always a comfort when your surroundings match your mood, even if it’s a melancholy one.

“You want a push? I can make you go all the way around the bar.”

Double D squeaks and squints through the shadows, which seem darker than they really are thanks to the scrutinous glare from the overabundance of suburban streetlights beyond the fenceline. “Ed?” he says.

“Hiya, Double D.” There’s a motion in the darkness that might be a wave hello.

“What are you doing out here?” says Double D.

“Contemplating my tragically finite individuality and insignificance in a cold, expanding universe that by its sheer magnitude challenges our very concepts of eternity and the self.”

Double D narrows his eyes. “Come again?”

“My room’s itchy now, Double D,” says Ed, in that verge-of-tears voice that begs _Fix it!_ “It makes my nose sneeze.” He clicks on a flashlight, shining it up at his own face. Flea powder is caked around his eyebrow and, worryingly, around the corners of his mouth. His eyes are red from irritation. He’s clutching a comic book and a throw pillow from his living room couch against his chest.

“Are you—“ Double D grinds his fists around the protective blue plastic coating on the chains of the swing. “Are you sleeping out here, Ed?”

“Let’s make popcorn!”

“Why not sleep on your couch?”

“I’m not allowed on the couch anymore since that time with the slushie.”

“But you can’t sleep outside! It’s the middle of September! Granted, you’re not at any significant risk of exposure yet, and your personal constitution has proven itself remarkably resilient time and again, but — you shouldn’t _have_ to sleep in the playground, Ed.”

“I always wished for a waterbed. Heheheh, sloshy sloshy sloshy.” With a prolonged squeak of skin-on-steel, Ed’s illuminated face slides closer to the mulch on the ground.

Double D can’t keep the sigh out of his voice when he says, “…You’re trying to sleep on… the slide.”

“Time moves slower in your dreams, Double D.”

“Of course it does.” He extracts himself from the swing and fetches his backpack without much enthusiasm. “Come on, Ed,” he says, exhausted. “Let’s go.”

“Okay!” 

Mother and Father, early risers that they are, are surely in bed by now, which means the inevitable chaos of trying to corral Ed into a the shower is out of the question. Suppressing guilt in the name of necessity, he sprays Ed down with the garden hose outside and scrubs at him with the big sponge Father uses to clean the car. This removes the worst of the dust from his hair and facial orifices — with the added benefit of reducing some of the usual… Ed Smell. The breeze picks up again, sending a dramatic shiver through Ed’s bones; Double D cuts the water and ushers him hastily inside. Straight to the stairs. 

“I can’t feel my elbows, Double D.”

“I’m working on it. Move along now.”

Two towels and one frantic sweep of the closet later, Ed’s body is straining the seams of a previously unworn sweater and pair of track pants that Mother had hoped in vain Double D would eventually grow into. “Better?”

“She’s a seaworthy vessel, Double D!”

“I’m sorry I can’t offer you a better fit. Father’s clothes would work, but they’re in his bedroom, and so is he.”

Ed’s still shivering sightly, sitting on the floor and being unusually quiet. If he’s half as exhausted as Double D then that’s hardly surprising. He also has that strange, lip-biting look. The one that suggests some combination of confusion and anxiety.

“Ed…?”

“Why am I still cold?” says Ed.

“Probably because you’re tired? It takes energy to raise your body temperature. The metabolic system supports the whole animal and calories are—”

“I’m tired?” He says this as though he’s never considered it a possibility, and perhaps he hasn’t recently.

“Yes, Ed. You worked very hard earlier today, and now it’s late. We’re both tired.”

Ed considers this for a moment. “Can we watch a movie?”

“Not tonight.”

Ed peacefully entertains himself with a picture book about chickens that Double D keeps on hand (just in case) while the thermarest quietly inflates on the floor. 

“I’ll have some explaining to do to Mother and Father in the morning,” Double D says (mostly to himself, but Ed appreciates being included) as he removes layers of vacuum-sealed seasonal clothing from the leftmost corner of his closet shelf. “I’m sure they wouldn’t approve of an unannounced overnight guest any day of the week, and particularly so on a school night. I doubt they’ll be angry once they understand the circumstances, but the effort it will require just to reach that point with them is a daunting prospect to say the lea — here it is.”

He unrolls the sleeping bag across the thermarest. It still smells of department store; Double D can’t have used it more than two or three times in the years since Father purchased it for him. “Good as new,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t have any extra pillows, but you can use one of mine.”

“Oo! Are we going camping?”

“Indoor camping, Ed. Right here.” He pats the sleeping bag.

Ed abandons the book and leapfrogs onto the makeshift bed. “Ghost stories! Ghost stories!”

“Shush. It’s nearly one in the morning. I thought you were tired.”

“MARSHMALLOWS.”

Double D lacks the energy for a showdown with Ed’s gluttonous Id. “If I get you some marshmallows,” he tries, “will you spend the rest of the night at least _pretending_ to sleep?”

Ed blinks. “Do a barrel roll.”

“Marshmallows, then bed,” Double D tries again.

“…Okay!”

Double D doesn’t hold much hope that Ed will be cooperative in the end, but he fetches the (stale) confectionary monstrosities from the kitchen, passes them to Ed on his way to bed, and as he reaches over to turn out the light, the big galoot is half-curled on his back like an upended turtle, flipping lumps of processed sugar into the air and catching them in his mouth, giggling between swallows. “This is just like _The Mutant Fish of New Atlantis,”_ he says.

“Lovable oaf,” Double D mutters as he rolls over in the darkness and tries to drift.

The fog rolls in quickly and Double D is almost gone when the mattress sinks and bounces under someone’s weight. Then the weight is against his back, and this is definitely a pair of arms that’ve forced their way around his chest and are squeezing with relentless force.

“Too — tight—“ he manages, and after a mild delay the force loosens. “Ed? Is that you?” It’s a ridiculous question, but this appears to be a ridiculous situation.

The answer is a monotone giggle and a _bizarre_ sensation against the back of his head, like a scraping, or a scrubbing, or —

— a face rubbing itself against the base of his skull.

Dear lord, Ed, haven’t you ever heard of personal space?

Annoyance turns to instant panic as the face-rubbing accidentally yanks at and loosens Double D’s sleeping-cap. _“Ed!”_

“I seen it before, Double D,” Ed mumbles, reasonably enough.

“Yes, but—“

“Shush. Happy kitty, sleepy kitty.”

Double D closes his eyes for another moment, because he already knows he’s defeated. “You mean to tell me,” he says, without much hope, “that you intend to sleep there the whole night?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do to convince you otherwise. I went to all that trouble to set up the air mattress…”

By this point Ed’s body heat (he’s become warm again — swift recovery, as per usual) is sinking into Double D’s skin like a hot shower on a cold day, and it’s sending him off into the fog again. Besides, half of the Ed Smell exists primarily in his clothes, which are currently dripping dry over the bathtub, and the other half of the smell gave up the ghost with encouragement from only a garden hose and a sponge saturated with congealed Armor All. And at the moment, his typically noxious breath only smells like marshmallows.

The sheets will require laundering no matter what, but his continued presence in Double D’s bed is… acceptable.

For now.

“Truth or dare?” says Ed, his voice buzzing unusually softly against the bare spot behind Double D’s ear.

Double D gives up and goes limp; Ed squeezes closer and seems to shapeshift to fit the mold of Double D’s jutting bones. Ed’s still big for his age, and hefty — more sandbag than boy. The weight of him rolled half onto Double D’s body is a pleasant pressure. Far preferable to the metaphorical pressure Double D’s been under, which flattens out into nothing and vanishes beneath Ed’s weight.

He manages exactly one sigh before dropping off.

 

Morning happens slowly.

Deep-pressure stimulation to reduce anxiety. Like the infamous squeeze box of Temple Grandin. A psychophysiological response pattern. Nothing more.

That’s what’s making Double D’s chest feel warm and full. That and the simple, pure pleasure of having company.

Certainly nothing as cliché or emotionally confusing as _butterfly feelings for your best friend._

And this comforting sensation in his head, as though his brain’s been creating a deep, soft nest for itself out of goose down and polyester fiberfill and threads plucked from Ed’s smelly old jacket — why hasn’t the poor boy replaced that old thing yet? He’s been wearing it since fourth grade and if it doesn’t fit him by now then it’s never going to —

The curl of Ed’s body tightens slightly around Double D; his thoughts freeze as rigidly as his arms.

He feels Ed’s face squish up against the back of his head again. 

His _bare_ head. Dear god, he’s not even decent!

But Ed’s just laughing through his closed mouth. “Daisy fresh,” he says.

Double D’s pulse finds its way to the base of his throat. He attempts to speak; manages a voiceless shrill croak of some sort.

“Hmm. WD-40,” Ed suggests, sagely.

“…We’re going to be late for school.”

That wakes him up. “Laaate!” Ed bounds to the floor, his legs taking the blanket with him. He doesn’t stay upright for too long, and Double D disembarks the bed more carefully and proceeds to disentangle the marauding linens from Ed’s flailing limbs. “Ed, please, calm yourself! Gracious, it’s like trying to get an octopus out of a tuna net,” he mutters, not because it the imagery makes sense but because he doesn’t want to think about his burning face or his exposed head. “Your clothes are probably dry by now…”

His eyes wander toward the door, and there on his desk chair is an exquisitely folded set of clothing encased in a paper band. “What in the name of Marie Kondo…!” He scrambles over Ed, leaving him to finish escaping the blanket on his own, and picks up the clothes. “Well, they’re definitely dry,” he says. Also freshly laundered. He drags a hand down his face. Mother must have found them hanging off the shower curtain rod when she went for her middle-of-the-night bathroom break and taken it upon herself to do the job properly.

Personally, Double D is more concerned by the fact that she was _in this very room_ sometime very early this morning, delivering the refreshed clothes, and inevitably saw the two of them in his bed together. _Spooning._ Fully dressed and innocently asleep! But still.

And on a school night!

They’re not eleven anymore. Sharing a bed with someone has _connotations_ now. Especially when doing so on a school night and without permission so it looks as though you’re sneaking around — it looks as though there’s something _to be_ sneaky about —

Her voice comes up the stairs. “Eddward! Breakfast!”

Ed is magically free of the sheets and on his feet before Double D can finish turning around. “Oh boy! I hope there’s french toast.”

“Get dressed first.”

He obeys, maybe because Ed is used to obeying, and Double D rushes through the wardrobe part of his own morning routine. He’ll have to forego a shower entirely — an unfortunate concession to circumstance which he knows only through past experience is at least survivable. He scratches the back of his neck, though, where a psychosomatic itch is already squirming.

“Double D? My clothes feel funny.”

“Yes, well, they’re clean now, Ed.”

“‘Clean’…?”

Double D leads him from the room while he’s distracted trying to puzzle that one out. “Your jacket’s a full three shades lighter than I thought it was,” says Double D. _It looks nice,_ he doesn’t say. _Calming. Inviting. If comfort food were a color._

There is, in fact, french toast, as well as plain, classic buttered toast, because Mother is an excellent hostess whose good manners compel her to anticipate her guests’ needs, even when she wasn’t informed there were any guests.

Double D leans toward her as Ed starts shoveling breakfast breads into his mouth without further preamble. “Mother, please, I’m sorry. We had to dust his room for bedbugs,” he whispers. “I found him sleeping in the playground because his sister wouldn’t let him sleep on the—“

“Hush now, Eddward,” she says, offering him a pill. 

Double D stares at it resting in the center of his palm. “Are you — did this — I was _looking_ for these—“

“I’ve had them,” says Mother, as though it were supposed to be obvious. 

“But — but _why?”_

“Your father and I thought it would be best.”

“‘Best’? But — What, so now I’m to be expected to come to you and _ask_ for one when I need it?” Does she not realize that this type of action is literally _impossible_ to undertake during most panic attacks? Or when he’s at school? Or when she’s at work? Or in the middle of the night? Or—

“Eddward, I don’t think now is the best time to have an argument.”

They both look at Ed, munching away with all the table manners of a hyena.

“…Are you angry?” asks Double D.

“About your friend? No,” says Mother. She knows a little about what Ed’s home life is like. Everyone in Peach Creek does, probably. “But next time, let me know. I don’t care if you have to wake me up.”

“…Yes, Mother.”

“And Eddward?”

“Y…yes, Mother?”

“You and your father are going to have a _conversation_ about some things after school, young man.”

Of course they are.

Eddy’s standing at the end of the walkway, his back to Double D’s door and his scowl fixed down at his watch. “‘Bout time,” he says. “Since when do you run late?”

“Well I’m _sorry,_ Eddy. I wasn’t aware you were planning to wait for us. It has been _quite a while_ since you did so, after all.”

The accusatory venom in Double D’s voice flies right over Eddy’s head. “‘Us’? …Oh. Hey, wait a hot second! What’s Ed doing at your place this early?”

“Oh, hiya, Eddy!”

“Again: Sockhead? Why’s Ed coming outta _your_ front door? What, you guys have a hot date last night or somethin’?”

“A gentleman doesn’t ask and a lady doesn’t tell,” says Ed.

They both stare at him, Double D the more aghast by far, until Ed hooks an elbow around his neck and pulls him into an effortless headlock that only loosely resembles a hug. “I have bedbugs!” Ed announces with a smile as sunny as any other smile he’s ever worn.

“…Uh-huh,” says Eddy. Then, lacking any particular response and not really seeing the need for one, he turns to go. “C’mon if you’re comin’. It’s too early in the year to play hooky. You only get so many of those in a year and it’s better to save ‘em up for midterms.”

Double D follows, thankful for the subject change. “No day is a ‘good’ day to pay hooky, Eddy. Why, the educational system—”

“Sure it is. The guys all say they never have to take big tests anymore since they made the team.”

“Are you certain they didn’t merely _tell_ you that as part of a complicated hazing ritual?”

“Hey!” Eddy stops Double D with a finger-jab to the chest. “You watch your mouth about the guys, buddy. You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us.”

Double D harumphs and readjusts his hat even though it hasn’t budged a millimeter. “Well forgive _me,_ Eddy. I hadn’t realized you were still in the business of standing up for anyone at all.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Hm. I see we’re sacrificing some late-series canonical character growth to the convenience of the medium, as per usual.”

“Eh, whatcha gonna do. I don’t make the rules, Double D, I just get written by them.” Eddy kicks a discarded fast-food wrapper off the sidewalk and into the road before Double D can pick it up for disposal in a proper receptacle. “Seriously, though, aren’t we gettin’ kind of old for sleepovers?”

“Sleepovers. Yes. Well. Um. Aheh — well, you see, Eddy, Ed’s room had to be—“

“And aren’t _you_ a little… y’know, _fussy_ to be doing stuff like that?”

Double D drops his fidgeting hands. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Aw, c’mon. You know.” Eddy looks away for a minute. “The whole Double D _thing._ The skinny arms and the neat-freak stuff and the fancy words and the _good manners_ and that voice like you’re still waiting for your balls to drop…”

Double D folds his “skinny” arms across his chest.

“I could go on,” says Eddy.

“Oh,” says Double D, “please _do.”_

Eddy leans in, but not too closely. “Everyone says you’re gay, dude,” he whispers.

“Oh, as if that means anything. Yesterday I heard Kevin accuse his _locker_ of being gay when the latch jammed.”

“No, dude! For real! They think you’re like really gay for real!”

Perspiration begins to form under his hat. “Wha — well, so what? They’ve been saying that since fifth grade!”

“Yeah, but this time they’re serious. Okay, there’s people who weren’t even _around_ in fifth grade who take one look at you and go, ‘Oh, yeah, totally, that kid’s a faggot. He totally sucks dick in his sleep, you can tell.’ They _all say it,_ man, I’m not kidding. You gotta be more careful now, Double D. ‘Specially if I’m still gonna be seen with you. I got a reputation to protect now, y’know?”

Double D sticks to the sidewalk, arms dangling at his sides, as the other Eds walk on ahead. 

Where to even begin. 

There are so many different things he could respond to — so many _very offensive and hurtful things,_ not least of which is the none-too-subtle threat of losing what little remains of Eddy’s friendship. 

But instead of leaping to his own defense, his mind seems intent on flipping through his extensive amassed collection of phrases that double as both witty repartee and witty coming-out announcements. (He’s been collecting such phrases for roughly two years now, though out of caution hasn’t written any of them down.) While there are several that meet Double D’s requirements for optimal wordplay and emotional impact to Eddy’s ego without sacrificing communicative integrity, none seem to fit this particular situation.

“Besides,” Eddy calls over his shoulder, “I thought I was the social glue here. You should’ve invited me. Asshole.”

Ed pats him consolingly on the head. “Two’s company, Eddy, but three’s illegal except in the state of Utah.”

They both stare at him. Again. A chilly breeze passes across the road and between them. It’s going to rain today.

“Someone’s getting good at double entendres,” Eddy grumbles, shoving Ed’s hand away and pulling out his phone. “Where’d you learn that from, Lumpy?”

“I before E except after C.”

 _That’s two innuendos in a single conversation, Ed,_ thinks Double D. He spends the rest of the walk to school gnawing off his fingernails (ugh, so unsanitary, icky icky icky, but he can’t _help_ it) and trying not to read anything into Ed’s blurts. _And_ trying not to focus on the rapidly increasing sensation that he is walking into a the lions’ den. It’s a good thing Mother anticipated his need for medication (though later on he’s going to become _very angry_ that she took it away from him without even consulting him first), because without it performing its medical miracle, right now he’d be on the ground in a puddle of his own flop sweat, gasping for air.

Instead he just keeps walking, watching the inner battle unfold between his abject panic and the forces of protective numbness.

 

 _“Double D!”_ whispers Nazz.

“Why are you whispering?” asks Double D.

“I don’t, like, want people to know I told you this…”

“Nazz, would I be wasting my time to point out that we are standing in the hallway of an overcrowded school, surrounded by a teeming mass of our peers, and that neither you nor I are invisible?”

“There’s this rumor…”

Oh dear. 

He tries to focus on removing the chemistry book from his locker without upsetting the empty specimen jars stacked on top.

Nazz comes closer, and her voice shrinks slightly more with every word: “I heard that you and Ed, like… _slept together?”_

Double D rolls his eyes. “Good news travels fast.”

“Oh. Em. Gee. It’s true?!”

The stitching on his backpack groans under the added weight of his textbook and Double D begins the arduous struggle of getting his arms through the straps. “Nazz, Ed’s bedroom is being treated for parasites. He needed alternative shelter for the night. That shelter happened to be my house. That’s — ungh! — there’s nothing more to tell.” The books weigh against his spine, straps dragging at his sore clavicles, at once both oppressive and reassuring.

Nazz’s face is blank as the bell rings and she drifts away. There’s no telling whether any of the facts actually sank in.

That hasty interaction is the only eventful moment of the day until gym class. Luckily this is the last year Double D will be required to participate — only two years are mandatory to satisfy county graduation standards — but some administrative sadist scheduled his own gym shift to take place immediately after lunch. 

And the teachers expect everyone to begin every single class session by running laps, with no regard for the body’s need to properly process nutrition. (Perhaps they’ll change their minds when some poor soul in his class inevitably vomits all over the teachers’ expensive sneakers. Perhaps it’ll be him.)

No matter how many doctors’ notes he’s presented to the administration of this school, he’s yet to be excused from participation in any part of gym class. Not even the asthma was sufficient to get him out of having to run those dreaded laps. Outdoors. Where the chilly September air can have its beastly way with his bronchial tubes.

Not even the lack of an actual _track_ is enough to warrant a reprieve.

The track is still there, of course, as is the football field. Both, however, are still recovering from last spring’s senior prank, in which some anonymous band of environmentally savvy hooligans planted sixty-two trees all throughout the field and track, and half a dozen more in the faculty parking lot. The devious twist is that the trees are endangered species — each one a different species — making it a felony for the school to simply cut them down or pull them up. Apparently a special permit is required to carefully dig up and relocate each individual tree, and these permits are neither cheap nor swift to obtain. And due to each tree being a different species, each one requires its own individual paperwork.

The school prioritized removal of the trees in the parking lot first, and even after having the entire summer to address the problem, is still working on gathering all necessary permissions for those remaining in the field and track.

Double D took the opportunity as often as possible over the course of the summer to trespass onto school property (though is it _really_ trespassing if the school is a public institution and he’s a duly registered student here?) and observe the rare trees’ growth cycle, as well as document which types of birds and insects seemed attracted to or repelled by each one. When Ed would join him, he’d either make himself out to be a racehorse galloping around the track (once pulling Double D onto his shoulders to be his jockey), or would sketch the trees’ blooms, leaf structures, bark patterns, and branch growth in Double D’s botany notebook as asked. 

Ed’s technical drawing skills have become quite remarkable, and if every third page or so features a two-headed pegasus resting in the branches or a giant fire-breathing moth devouring tall buildings, well, it just means Double D has more interesting field notes. It’s not as though any of his findings are publishable, which means the study is purely for pleasure, and there is indeed great pleasure in leafing through the pages during lonely moments, admiring Ed’s creativity, and indulging his own sentimentality.

There are only eight trees remaining in the football field now, and his favorite was removed the week before school started, so the field study has lost its sparkle.

Double D can’t help but admire the amount of planning, money, and special equipment this prank must have demanded, especially to break through the pavement in the faculty parking lot. He also chooses to believe that the pranksters’ motivation at least partially included a mission of mercy, to spare underclassmen such as himself from at least some of the draconian rigors of gym class.

Unfortunately, the gym teachers seem to have taken this as a personal challenge of dominance, some perhaps even believing the rumor that Lemon Brook students were the culprits in order to hamstring Peach Creek’s football team for the season, and it seems to have soured the gym teachers’ collective mood. Which they have no qualms about taking out on the students. Double D doesn’t think he’s fooling himself when he asserts that they’re crueler overall compared to last year.

The students still run laps, and they must still do so outdoors, but instead of circling the track while the teachers watch from the center of their panopticon-like stadium, now they must run around the entire main building instead. Through discarded trash, under low-hanging tree branches that try to steal your hat, over cracked concrete and large, toe-stubbing rocks. Past windows, where everyone sitting in the climate-controlled comfort of their chairs and classrooms can idly watch students panting and slipping in the damp leaves while wearing nothing but (entirely inadequate) regulation T-shirts and mesh shorts. Where anyone at all could bear witness to Double D’s final gasping collapse to the ground — a daily feature of this so-called “class”.

He can only hope that Mother and Father will pursue litigation when the sadists finally run him to _death._

The teachers’ redoubled cruelty, however, is nothing compared to his fellow students’. 

Gym class, even co-ed, has long been an unusually gender-segregated affair, with the boys and girls clustering together in opposite areas, leaving the Eds awkwardly alone in the middle. And since transitioning to high school and having their individual schedules scattered to the four winds, it’s been Double D by himself, awkwardly alone in the middle. Exposed on all sides. No longer protected by his identity as “one of the Eds”, he’s now merely a single, vulnerable, _generic_ athletically challenged nerd like any other.

And this year, the girls are in another class entirely, so there’s no longer even a “middle” in which to stand. He’s merely off to one side, a lone tree in a lightning storm.

As it turns out, the presence of the girls had some sort of tranquilizing effect on even the most barbarous boys in class. Double D suspects that last year the other guys left him mostly alone because they knew engaging in bullying or otherwise behaving like ruffians would not endear them to the fairer sex.

Now that the girls are gone, so too is their indirect peacekeeping influence.

Double D has never _witnessed_ so many wedgies in such a short timeframe, much less _received_ all of them. Two weeks into the term and he’s already been pantsed twice, tripped nine times (twice directly into the mud and once into a literal brick wall), shoved against four lockers, been violated by two wet willies, whipped with one damp towel, and been subjected to so many homophobic slurs it’s not even worth the effort of counting them. 

(This tally doesn’t even include Kevin’s decision to treat Double D’s torso as a his personal punching bag, which transcends beyond gym class.)

The teachers, of course, never see _aaanything,_ not even when they make direct eye contact with Double D at the crucial moment.

The system really is rigged.

 _Hypothesis: high school doesn’t “prepare” you for the real world,_ he thinks as he jams his feet into his gym shorts, keeping a wary side-eye on the rest of the locker room. _It gives you a caricatured preview of your predetermined caste role in life so that you can make an informed decision when considering whether or not to commit suicide before you turn eighteen._

“Let’s go, ladies!” the gym teacher bellows into the locker room.

“Kudos for setting such an upstanding example for the next generation,” Double D mutters under his breath.

The wind has brought in a light misting drizzle — humidity 100%, nearly cold enough to form ice crystals before reaching the ground, but not substantial enough to qualify as “rain” and therefore, according to the rules, acceptable to subject underdressed minors to. Even the asthmatic ones.

Rules such as these are part of the rigged system. The _rules_ are conspiring for his downfall. The _rules._

Such treachery. Double D clings to his own shivering elbows — goosebumps, eugh, bumpy bumpy bumpy — and lurches forward into the squelching wet grass at the minimum permissible gait to qualify as “jogging”, which amounts to “walking with a very slight prance”. 

His reward for the effort is to receive two separate strikes to the back of his head and one to the back of a knee as the rest of the class blows past him. The glancing kick to his knee makes his legs noodle out from under him; he staggers and manages to catch his balance before hitting the ground, which has been transformed into an endless shallow puddle of icewater, grass blades reaching up through the shiny grey surface like tiny stalagmites.

There’s some peace once the rest of the class rounds the corner and the gym teachers go back inside to wait in comfort for everyone to finish their two laps and come crawling back into the gym to resume class. With no one to observe him, he ceases the ridiculous prancing and simply walks with as much dignity as he can possibly project while mostly nude and sopping wet. 

_But what if a teacher’s watching?_ screams his former self. _What if one comes back outside and sees you cheating?!_

The suggestion sends his pulse skyrocketing — a clonazepam in the morning starts wearing off at about this time of day. The _worst_ time of day, and now that Mother no longer trusts his judgment enough to let him keep his meds with him, he has no way to shore up his defenses with a strategic second dose. 

(“As needed”, the prescription says. Not “as Mother allows”. It’s _right there on the bottle.)_

Still, Double D refuses to pick up the pace again. He pits reason against anxiety, defiantly. The gym teachers don’t care enough to watch, and even if they did, his health is worth more to him than the unjust rules of a rigged system that seems tailor-made to weed out people like him and encourage him to remove himself not only from society but from the entire human gene pool, in the most permanent way imaginable.

And he used to have such firm self-esteem.

In fact, no, he doesn’t have to do laps at all! And the longer he stays out here with these disgusting goosebumps and this dripping nose and this _rain,_ the more saturated his socks and shoes are going to get, and, being distracted this morning on several fronts, he neglected to bring spare footwear today.

Double D stops walking. He looks at the ground and shivers harder.

There’s not even any reason for him to be outside at all! If no one is watching, and if the _rules_ governing this sadistic tradition are merely a tool of social darwinism rather than of order and tranquility, then what’s to stop him from sneaking back inside, hiding in the locker room for twenty minutes (the amount of time it usually takes him to complete his laps), then strolling back into the gym as though everything were normal?

Yes! Yes, by golly, he’s going to do it! Eddward, the Lawful Good to end all Lawful Goods, is going to reject the entire convention of running laps for gym class! His teenage rebellious streak is finally kicking in! Huzzah! Oh, fateful day when at long last he stands up and asks, rhetorically, what’s to stop him from living his life according to his own best judgment?

Resolute, he turns back toward the door, and slams face-first into Kevin’s chest.

…Oh. _That’s_ what’s to stop him.

Before he can finish falling backward into the swampy puddles, Kevin’s fists bury themselves in his gym shirt, holding him up by nothing but overstretched wet cotton and overblown adolescent aggression.

Dear god, there are two more of those soccer-team troglodytes standing behind him, laughing. Kevin’s never come after him with _backup_ before. 

“Where you think _you’re_ going, Double Dweeb?”

Double D manages a brief, nonsensical stutter.

“Or is it Double _Dicked?”_

 _Oh dear,_ thinks Edd. As Kevin swings him around and throws him — literally picks him up and _throws_ him — against the crunchy red bricks, Double D has a revelation. It is not a happy revelation:

This time is different. 

Kevin’s fist slows to a crawl as it comes toward his face. Not his stomach, his face. The rain around him slows as well. There are nine individual droplets hanging suspended across the span of Kevin’s knuckles.

This time is much more serious.

Now would be an ideal opportunity to dodge, or to flinch, or even to sneak in a retaliatory uppercut. But he can’t convince any part of his body to move. Not even a blink. Adrenaline is nobody’s friend.

This time is the start of something new and several orders of magnitude more terrible.

 _Eddy said something,_ he thinks; time resumes its normal speed and Kevin’s fist crashes into his mouth.

Double D goes to the ground and curls into the kind of defensive ball some people advise for surviving a grizzly bear encounter. Kevin is kicking him somewhere near his kidneys and screaming… something. 

He’s fairly certain the word _fag_ works its way into the monologue somewhere. Kevin’s _buddies_ can’t seem to say anything else.

Eddy’s fault.

Eddy told someone about this morning. Several someones. Nazz knew before third period, didn’t she? Of course. Of _course_ it was Eddy. It’s _always_ Eddy.

Fingers grab his hair through his hat and try to smash his face into the bricks. He hunches his head deeper down between his shoulders to protect it. Hits the wall several more times. He feels like a coconut at the mercy of hungry and confused capuchins. Trying to crack him open.

“Get up, dork!”

…More than one person is kicking him now. He tightens his fetal ball; in the murky recesses of his mind he can imagine Ed blurting something nonsensical but encouraging about hedgehogs.

He can’t stop holding his breath and every muscle is clenched hard as rock and his bones are on fire and his face is throbbing and the noise around him becomes noise in his head and hot salt is pouring from his eyes and

“Dude, someone’s coming.”

There’s a long, terrible moment of Waiting For The Next Blow. This is followed by the lurching feeling of trying to climb a stair that isn’t there, a feeling of falling so harsh and sickening that it’s just as bad, in its own way, as being kicked again. He physically startles at the nothingness.

Gradually Double D can begin to hear the rain falling all around him. Real rain now. Hissing through the sickly trees. Splishing in the puddles. Ringing against the windowpanes. Between the drops, there is quiet. Safe now?

Oh dear. He’s very, very wet.

As he uncurls — slowly; it hurts his joints a great deal — Double D becomes aware that he’s crying freely. It’s running into the corners of his mouth. Blood from his nose and upper lip is washing down the front of his lips, across his teeth, dirtying his chin like drool. Perhaps there is some drool in the mix. There’s just no telling.

Goodness. He’s certainly not presentable for class. Not even gym. 

Double D holds a hand to the side of his dizzy head, trying to stop his ears from ringing. Turns in a few confused circles, working out where things are, then starts walking along the edge of the building. The mud pulls at his half-numb feet.

If he goes to the nurse, she’ll be obligated to call Mother and Father and possibly the police to report the assault. His parents will worry even more. There will be Consequences.

He trails his hand along the brick façade of the school to steady himself as he trudges.

Behind the cafeteria is a small seating area with a single, much-graffitied picnic table where students of the extreme highest or extreme lowest social standing can choose to eat their lunch. It is mercifully unoccupied today, courtesy of the weather. Double D passes through it the picnic area quickly; the cafeteria’s enormous windows overlook it, and the last thing he wants right now is people looking at him.

Just on the other side of this charming patio is an exterior concrete-and-brick staircase leading up to a locked second-floor storage room that maintenance uses. Double D squints up at the mysterious, faded blue door with no small amount of longing. No one would consider looking for him in there.

Too bad it’s completely inaccessible. Kids try their luck with the locks all the time; that’s _why_ there are locks, plural. He’s never heard of anyone successfully getting in, not even in tall tales.

There’s a sheltered area beneath the staircase, though, hidden on three sides with brick. There’s no grass in the muddy shadows beneath the stair, and plenty of spiderwebs. Poorly spelled graffiti on the brick, announcing to the world that Becky is a hoe, Jeremy is a fagget. Some detritus in the corners — paper scraps ripped from a spiral notebook, empty Mountain Dew bottle, a shattered ballpoint, four cigarette butts, a ten of diamonds someone has burned a hole through. As Double D crawls in, he can smell the mildew; if he had any more feeling left in his cold skin, it would be creeping. Only on a day like today would it be more dry under here than outside.

He sits, and draws his bare knees to his chest, and wraps his bare arms around them. Settling his face down into the warm crevice between knees and chest, icy water dripping off the end of his hat down the middle of his back, Double D resumes his regularly scheduled weeping.

 

A great deal of time passes — long enough for gym to be over and for his world history teacher to have marked his absence and reported it to the main office — and Double D has yet to run out of tears. He’s settled more “comfortably” in the deepest corner, not quite on his side but still fetal, head resting against the mossy moldy brick. 

The filth doesn’t bother him at all. He feels at home in it right now; filth is apropos. That’s how he knows, approximately, what awful shape he’s in. All he needs is wi-fi, Amazon Prime, his label maker, and a pillow, and he’s set for life.

He’s heard footsteps or and voices approach and fade, approach and fade, but no one’s found him yet. Certainly no one’s looking for him. His privacy is secure. 

The rain has stopped, though he doesn’t remember it stopping. The moisture’s begun to evaporate from his skin, hair, meager clothes, but slowly. The air circulation is abysmal here in his new home. The outer layers of his skin are mostly numb; his fingernails are blue. Wet cotton is the great hypothermic catalyst. He’s still shivering, though, so there’s no real danger yet.

This time he hears the bell ring. So it’s… what, sixth period now? Seventh? The day’s almost over.

And then what? Go home? Looking like _this?_ His clothes and backpack are still in the locker room, unless someone turned them into lost and found by now.

He needs a plan.

He needs Eddy. Eddy’s the planner.

But Eddy’s the one who blabbed.

…Unless someone else blabbed _first._ Someone else could’ve easily seen Ed leaving Double D’s house with him this morning. Perhaps several someones. Perhaps _everyone._ Perhaps nobody told Kevin anything, and Kevin just… saw. The cul-de-sac is much smaller than it used to feel.

_My kingdom for a nice studio loft in a very large city, very far away from Peach Creek. Perhaps Manhattan, or Toronto, or London. Or Johannesburg. A place where the windows can shut completely, and there are nine locks on the door. And a very large bathroom with a big fancy shower and a bidet. If the shower doesn’t have doors I’ll get a curtain that has a da Vinci drawing printed on it. The Vetruvian Man, maybe, or designs for the flying machine. I’ll display my entire insect collection on the walls, arranged taxonomically and sub-arranged chromatically to reduce visual chaos. I’ll build my own Roomba and put googly eyes on it and let Ed name it something ridiculous and we can take it for walks together around the neighborhood on street-cleaning day._

His crying reduced now to hiccups and thick sniffles, Double D is detailing to himself the color of the kitchen backsplash and the cabinet handles that match it when he hears footsteps and voices that don’t fade this time.

Then, suddenly, a face appears in the entrance. The face blinks at him.

He blinks back, not recognizing it, not breathing, tense all the way down to his toenails.

Then the face disappears to call over a shoulder, “Hey! There’s someone in the fort!”

So much for privacy.

“What?” Footsteps approach, followed by a new face. An adult one. The special ed teacher. Ah, yes, that’s right, the special ed kids are stuck with the last lunch shift, and always eat outside unless the weather refuses to be borne, which Ed likes because it’s a picnic almost every day. 

Surprise and obvious concern join the confusion already on the teacher’s face. “Oh my god. Are you okay? What’re you doing here, sweetie?”

“Waiting for death, essentially,” says Double D.

She frowns, and squints. “You’re… We met, didn’t we? A few weeks ago?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Eddward, right?”

“Yes.”

“What happened? Did you get in a fight?”

“That would be a generous description.”

Her expression shifts. “You need to go to the nurse.”

Double D shakes his head.

“I really think you should see the nurse. Why don’t you come on out?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

She thinks for a moment. “May I come in?”

“It’s quite unsanitary.”

“I don’t mind.”

Double D has to give her credit for sheer dedication. “All the same. I’d rather you not.”

“I can’t just leave you here, Eddward. You’re bleeding, it’s cold, you’re wearing shorts…”

“Actually, I believe the bleeding stopped quite some time ago.”

“That’s not…” She sighs. “That’s hardly the point. C’mon, let’s get you cleaned up and dry.”

“All things in good time,” says Double D. “It’s still exceedingly doubtful whether I’m in any kind of emotional shape to move yet.”

Unsure how to respond to that, she backs up a step and straightens, face vanishing from view. He can hear her exchanging hushed words with some other people — the aides who help around the special education room, presumably; Double D’s never met any of them but Ed is fond of one Miss Jacobs.

And now he’s caught the students’ interest; some are crowding up the entrance, trying to catch a look at him.

“Oh, hiya, Double D!” Ed shoves his way handily past the lot of them and crawls in on all fours even though there’s ample headroom to walk if he only ducked over a little.

Double D doesn’t mind this particular intrusion, though some of Ed’s classmates take it as an invitation to follow him in while the teacher tries in vain to convince them otherwise.

“Who is it?”

“You know him?”

“It’s _our_ fort! What’s the password? You can’t be in there without the password!”

“Grow up.”

“But it’s ours!”

Ed turns and growls at them over his shoulder. Double D can’t see his face but he knows the expression being employed just the same. The other kids go quiet and fall back, and Double D can’t say that he blames them.

Closing the rest of the space between them, Ed lifts a hand from the mud and tries to poke the dried blood that Double D hasn’t finished scraping from his face yet. 

He swats Ed’s hand away. “Not without washing those mitts of yours first,” he says.

Ed curls up on his haunches, plants his fists on his knees, and leans in, scowling closely at Double D’s face. His overgrown body is big enough to shield Double D entirely from the prying eyes outside, and there’s warmth coming off of him. Double D’s intestines unknot, slightly.

When Ed tilts his head and leans another inch closer, still inspecting, still thinking, there’s an uncomfortable (but not entirely unpleasant) feeling in Double D’s stomach — and this time, he can’t explain it away as deep-pressure therapy, because they’re not touching at all.

Still, the sudden sensation of prickling warmth coasting over his cheeks and ears must absolutely be a circulatory response to being near a heat source for the first time in hours. All human beings’ faces flush when coming in from the cold. Simple biological mechanics. Yes, of course, nothing more. He clears his throat and swallows.

“I need you to go to your happy place, Double D,” says Ed, echoing back the words Double D first spoke to him years ago. His voice is very low, and there’s no trace of laughter anywhere in it.

Double D sighs, defeated, and lets his face drop to his forearms. “I’m afraid that’s not possible right now, Ed.”

“Did you walk into a door?”

Eddward snaps his head up and stares, hard, at Ed’s extremely unsmiling face.

It’s the first time any of the Eds have made even a passing reference to the time, years and years ago now, when Ed’s father — now divorced and kept out of Peach Tree via restraining order — made Ed tell everyone that he’d walked into a door. Although to this day no one but Ed knows the full story, it became clear that Ed tried desperately to uphold the lie only because his father threatened to do the same to Sarah if Ed were to disobey.

“Yes, Ed,” says Double D, slowly. “I walked into a door. In gym class.”

Ed’s teeth grind, and for a moment he looks like he’s becoming a comic-book monster again. Double D shrinks back despite himself. But then Ed reaches slowly out with both hands, grabs Double D’s upper arms, and pulls him away from the wall. 

“Horsie ride?” Ed offers.

“Um. No thank you,” says Double D, trying not to fall over.

So Ed shuffles backwards on his knees, still pulling him along, until they both emerge into the grey light of afternoon.

He doesn’t let go until they’re both on their feet.

The teacher — Double D is certain her name is bouncing around somewhere in his memory banks; he’s simply too non-functional just at present to retrieve it — covers her mouth with her hand, then tries to fake a smile. “That’s gonna be a real shiner, there, kiddo,” she tries. “In fact, I hate to tell you this, but it’s already starting to purple up. Eddward, I really, really need you to go to the nurse. Please. Now.”

Unfortunately, Double D is just as incapable of complying as he is of arguing. Trapped in between, he looks down at his hands, blue-white fingers twisting together.

“Ed? Would you like to go with him?”

Ed stiffens up beside him — my word, is he _tall_ when he exercises good posture — and fires off a salute with the wrong hand. “Be all that you can be!”

“Make _sure_ he gets to the nurse,” she says. “I’ll call ahead and let them know you’re coming.”

“I ain’t afraid of no ghost,” says Ed, and he wraps an arm, hard, around Double D before turning them both around and marching them back inside with a bit of a goose step. Double D looks up long enough to see the kids in the cafeteria _begin_ to stare at him — then to notice Ed’s possessive arm around him, and Ed’s size, and Ed’s Angry Face — and finally to all look hastily away again. 

Ed could _rule_ this place, were it in his nature to do so.

Once they get past the cafeteria, the halls are blissfully empty, and much quieter than Double D is used to. It’s… nice. Or would be, if being in the warmth weren’t making his face throb and swell with an intensity it was unable to achieve out in the cold. Both of Ed’s sneakers are squeaking now. Leaving a faint trail of mud and rainwater behind them. The squeaks echo off the cinder-block walls.

“Tell me a story,” says Ed, exercising unusually good volume control, and still not releasing Double D from his side.

Double D says nothing. Shivers in the protective if odorous embrace of being tucked into Ed’s armpit.

 _“Tell me,”_ says Ed.

“…I don’t know what to say.” 

“It was the one-armed man,” says Ed.

He tries not to answer, and doesn’t know why — this isn’t snitching, it’s not like a _teacher_ is demanding he name names, it’s just Ed, and anyway Double D never understood why there should ever be any kind of moral code against holding people accountable for their own actions. But it feels… He just doesn’t want to drag Ed into anything, that’s all. Lord knows he has enough troubles of his own.

Ed stops walking, stops Double D from walking, squeezes him harder. Scowls harder. Still looking directly ahead, down the hall at nothing.

He squeezes a sigh right out of Double D’s body, and riding on the sigh is the nearly whispered word, “Kevin.”

Ed’s eye twitches once, then both eyes blink out of turn, then they proceed to the nurse’s office without another word.

She doesn’t look at all surprised to see him in such a state, though she does remark that it’s awfully early in the school year for things to have escalated this much. She cleans Double D up and gives him some ice for his eye — Ed sitting on the edge of the vinyl padded table in the back room, swinging his feet back and forth but leaning forward and watching the proceedings rather intently, and _still_ scowling — before the nurse crosses her arms and leans back in her chair. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking what happened, or who’s responsible?” she says.

Double D shakes his head.

She clicks her tongue and seems to be running down a list of potential suspects in her mind, but doesn’t press the issue. Instead she presses her mouth into a thin flat line and says, “I think you could use a couple of stitches on that lip.” 

Double D’s stomach bottoms out. “Oh my, please, I really don’t think that’s necessary…”

“And you really need to get checked over again for head injuries. I think you’re alright there, but I’m not technically qualified to say for sure, and better safe than sorry.”

“I _told_ you how many fingers you were holding up!”

“I’m sorry. I’m not gonna withhold my medical opinion just so you can avoid a confrontation. And — sorry again, kiddo, but you know what comes next,” she says, reaching for the phone.

“Oh, no, no! Please!”

“I have to,” she says. “It’s the _law._ Okay? I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Double D puts the ice down to hide his face in his hands. Ed jumps up and comes over to stand awkwardly next to him. “Be a good boy and you’ll get a sticker and a lollipop.”

Father’s in a meeting and unavailable; Mother squawks and frets so loudly that Double D can hear it her over the receiver and Ed perks up in confusion like a pug when someone’s blowing on a dog whistle in the next room. 

The nurse sends Double D to lie down in the back, and sends Ed with a hall pass to go get Double D’s backpack and such from the locker room. When he returns with them, Double D sits up and immediately pulls on his sweater, and then lets Ed manhandle him into a hug. The nurse has barely begun to suggest that Ed go back to class when Ed cuts her off with the same death-glare that silenced all his classmates. She shrugs, not intimidated in the least but knowing an unwinnable battle when she sees one, and goes back to her computer to file a report.

Ed holds Double D’s broken face to his stinky chest and pets the still-damp side of his hat, relentlessly, pressing Double D’s cheek up against his huge, strong heartbeat. Yes, it hurts, but the immediate benefit outweighs the consequence, and anyway Double D doesn’t have remotely enough energy to disagree with Ed right now. Ed continues squeezing and petting with mindless steady rhythm even after the nurse knocks on the frame of the open door and says that Mother is here.

Mother has managed to calm herself somewhat on the drive to school, thank goodness; although, while she and the nurse talk quietly in the other room, Mother keeps sending worried looks Double D’s way, and… _odd_ looks Ed’s way.

She seems rather fatigued when she finishes her conversation with the nurse and comes to stand at the edge of the dimly lit room. “Ready?”

Ed resists momentarily when Double D begins to pull away. Double D’s heart begins pounding at the sudden lack of contact. 

For an alarming few moments, it seems that Ed’s going to make an attempt to prevent Mother taking him away. She seems to sense it, however, and pats Ed consolingly on the arm, soothing him enough to quiet the strange whimper-growls burbling from his throat. He nontheless follows them all the way out through the front door before stopping by the flagpole and watching Double D limp toward Mother’s car, then watching the car pull out of the lot. 

Double D looks back at him through the window. Ed’s still watching him, blankly, not smiling at all.

 

Luckily Mother takes him to their usual general practitioner rather than a hospital — cesspools of infection that they are — and Dr. Fuentez is able to check over his head and put two stitches in his top lip and three above his eyebrow (where Double D hadn’t even realized he was injured) right there in her old familiar office. She also wants to examine his ribs and poke his internal organs through his belly, and Double D refuses to lift his shirt, but it seems he’s managed to escape more serious injury this time. The local anaesthetic in his face makes it difficult to speak (and difficult to know when his nose is dripping until he feels it on his chin, icky icky icky), but also luckily, Mother seems willing to allow for silence. 

For a short while, anyhow.

She does make a feeble attempt at the “you know you can talk to me about anything”s but Double D could not be less interested in platitudes right now if he tried. Particularly not from the woman who, less than twenty-four hours ago, _took away his duly prescribed medication_ with immediate consequences.

He satys in the car while she goes into the pharmacy to fill his _new_ prescriptions. He doesn’t even unlatch the seatbelt.

The rain starts again, emphatically, on the way home. Mother has to put the windshield wipers on the highest setting. It’s barely 2:30 in the afternoon, but Double D’s circadian rhythm would swear up and down that it’s past midnight.

“I’d like to try to schedule a few extra sessions for you with Dr. Sylvia,” says Mother.

He props his elbow on the edge of the window, props his mostly numb face in his hand. Of course. That’s right: in the midst of all this madness, he’d completely forgotten to tell Mother that he plans on dropping Dr. Sylvia and finding someone with a more sympathetic ear. Well, now certainly isn’t the time to work his way into that can of worms. The situation is dizzying enough as it is.

The windshield wipers squeak as they labor back and forth.

“And if you want to stay home for the rest of the week,” says Mother, “and frankly I think you should, I can call the school in the morning and let them know. Maybe Eddy can pick up your assignments for you.”

 _“No! Nah E’y!”_ Double D cries before he can stop himself.

Mother gives him a double-take. “Why not Eddy?” she asks. “Did you two have a…?”

He shakes his head, waves it away. “He ‘ust… he’s bb’sy. Wiff da team’n all.”

She frowns, and hums to herself. “Ed, then,” she says, though she sounds a trifle reluctant.

Double D fights back an urge to challenge that, to demand _And what’s wrong with Ed?_ , but with his mouth half-numb and Dr. Fuentez’s painkillers fuzzing up his mind and all the energy he _doesn’t_ have, it hardly seems worth it. He just glares at her while she’s too busy watching for traffic to notice his dirty look.

(All the while wondering, privately, silently, _secretly,_ why Mother’s sudden vague diffidence toward Ed has managed to raise Double D’s hackles, when not four hours ago, he was utterly unable to become angry or defend his own person from Kevin’s onslaught.)

“You and your father are still going to have that talk,” Mother says. “Probably not tonight, but don’t think you’re getting out of it just because you look like you got hit by a truck, young man.”

Double D’s not entirely sure, anymore, what this particular talk is meant to be _about._

“Does he need to have a talk with you about fighting, too?”

Because Double D can’t say _Does it_ look _like I became involved in this altercation willingly?_ he elects, instead, to give her a Look, and when she glances over at him, to gesture emphatically at his own face.

“Alright,” she relents, “I suppose that wasn’t a very smart question.”

The only reason Double D refrains from scoffing is because of his iron-clad dedication to basic manners. The impulse is nonetheless there.

“I just… I worry, Eddward. You haven’t seemed like yourself lately.”

The inchoate fighting spirit that was building inside him vanishes entirely at that. 

He looks down at his hands — pulls out his handkerchief and cleans himself up to the best of his ability when a drip plats down from his nose — then turns away to guiltily watch the rain. His face is beginning to tingle and prickle and feel chilly. He runs his fingertips over the butterfly closures, feeling the thorny bumps of sutures underneath. He shudders.

Home feels quiet, which is excellent, but also strangely cold, almost colder than it is outside, which is… suboptimal. Perhaps it’s a psychosomatic effect due to the gloom and rain dimming all the color out of the walls, or perhaps Double D’s metabolism is still attempting to catch up after sitting in the cold mud for nearly two hours. 

Mother suggests a shower and a lie-down while she takes a frozen lasagna out of the box. “I know it’s a little early for dinner,” she says, “but it’s an off-schedule kind of day. It needs to bake for an hour and a half anyhow.”

Frankly, Double D’s first choice right now would be to bury himself under the duvet and cry himself to sleep, but his tear ducts have wrung themselves dry, his emotional capacity has overreached and left him hollowed out, so immediate blissful unconsciousness without further catharsis sounds like a close second best. 

But he didn’t have his shower this morning, and since then, he’s been in contact with mildew, mud, Kevin’s fists and shoes, Ed’s armpit, the usual repugnancies of an overpopulated public school building and the locker rooms thereof, and lord knows what else — with _open wounds_ — to say nothing of the biochemical catastrophe from the night _before._

Shower it is. Long, scalding hot shower. Perhaps with an iodine scrub. And copious abuses of his favorite loofah.

Goodness, has the staircase always been this long? The steps always so steep and cruel? He hasn’t reached the top yet, and is beginning to doubt he ever will, when the doorbell rings.

Some heavy instinct brings his climb to a standstill. This is that old, familiar, no-use-running sense of resignation in regards to some impending dread or other. So he is deeply unsurprised to hear Eddy’s voice when Mother answers the door.

“I don’t know,” Mother is saying. “He’s had a really long day… Maybe it’d be best if I just have him call you tomor—“

“Don’t. Bother,” says Double D, suddenly back on the ground floor again and taking the doorknob from her, swinging the door open the rest of the way so he can properly glower at Eddy, who glowers right back from under the hood of his raincoat.

Until Eddy gets a better look at him; then the scoundrel’s face goes from I’m-the-baddest-boy-on-the-block-and-don’t-you-forget-it, to oh-no-I-have-an-emotion-and-don’t-know-what-to-do. “Dude,” he says, “you look like shit.”

“If you want to be charitable about it, sure.”

Mother, wisely, drifts away without even a comment about Eddy’s foul language, and Double D moves to block the doorway with his own body, because Eddy has never and probably will never ask before coming in. (Of course, it was rarely ever a problem before…) Well, not today. Eddy isn’t setting one muddy, backstabbing foot into the sanctum of Double D’s family household.

Eddy responds to the obvious unwelcome by taking half a step back and giving Double D a thorough once-over. “I, uh… so like… you okay and all?”

“I’ll _survive,”_ says Double D, “no thanks to you.”

“What’d _I_ do?”

Double D folds his arms and juts out his chin, hoping there’s no mucus on his face. Sensation hasn’t _quite_ returned yet.

“C’mon man, don’t be like that. Don’t be all…” Eddy says the rest in falsetto: “‘If you can’t figure out why I’m mad at you then I’m certainly not gonna tell you.’ It’s a total chick move. Don’t you have enough problems already without acting like some girl?”

“First of all, Eddy, don’t be such a misogynist—“

“Gesundheit.”

“And secondly, don’t be such a _gossip!”_

“Excuse me?”

“You of all people should know the truly damaging ramifications that can come of an unchecked rumor! Why, if you’d ever learned the virtue of knowing when to keep your _rotten mouth shut—”_

“Dude! I have _literally no idea_ what you’re talkin’ about!”

“Oho, so _now_ you want to play the ignoramus? Need I remind you, Eddy, that _just this morning_ you were informing me of my current status in the rumor mill that you… you _athletically inclined types_ seem to regard as having some kind of journalistic integrity? _This very morning.”_

“Whoa! Hey man, take it down a notch, willya? I didn’t have no part in that bullshit! Okay? I was just tellin’ you what I _heard._ Y’know, so you could maybe _avoid_ this kinda thing happening?”

Double D’s mouth falls open. “You… you _knew?_ You _knew he was planning to grind me into the dirt_ and you didn’t _say_ anything? _Do_ anything?”

Eddy’s face pinches. “No,” he says, more quietly but _much_ more intensely. “No, I didn’t fucking _know,_ okay? It’s not like I talk to the guy, like, ever.”

“Oh you _don’t,_ don’t you?”

“No!”

“Then perhaps—“ Double D checks himself, glances over his shoulder — Mother is nowhere in sight, but just in case, he steps out onto the threshold and lowers his voice. “Perhaps you’d care to explain to me how the entire _school_ managed to not only find out that Ed slept here last night, but to spin it to the same moronic, homophobic conclusion that _you_ did?”

Eddy steps forward as well — steps in close, darkening, stiffening, raising a finger to jab hard at Double D’s shoulder (by accident or design, one of the few parts of his body _not_ currently in pain). “I. Didn’t. Say. _Anything,”_ he says. “I heard some new stuff goin’ around this morning, and I didn’t say _shit. Lotsa_ people saw you guys this morning, not just me. _Everyone_ already thought you were gay, and it don’t take a genius to put two and two together. Why d’you think I tried to warn you this morning, huh? So maybe you wouldn’t do _stupid shit like that_ to give people _more_ reasons to think you’re a big ol’ homo!”

“Classic victim-blaming,” scoffs Double D.

“I’m not blaming you, dumbass. I’m just sayin’ don’t go blaming _me_ when I had _nothin’_ to do with this! I mean. Hell-lo, _genius,_ why the hell would I tell the guys you’re a cocksucker when I still hang out with you? That’d make _me_ look bad.”

That… that is a perfectly rational (if extraordinarily bigoted) defense. Double D blinks a few times, and lets go of a breath.

“Trust me,” says Eddy, “I didn’t say _anything.”_

…No. No, Double D supposes he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t… say… Oh. “Wow,” says Double D. He looks up at Eddy, squinting, studying the face of this tall, sports-playing stranger who somehow grew from the seed of his very old, very dear, very short friend. “You’re absolutely right,” he says. “Of course you didn’t say anything. Nothing at all.”

“I fucking swear it.”

“Oh no, I believe you, alright. I have absolutely no trouble believing that you listened to what people were saying about me this morning without once opening your mouth to say, oh, I don’t know, something like, ‘Hey, don’t be such a backwards bigot,’ or ‘That’s not an acceptable way to talk about people,’ or ’Those are my _friends_ you’re talking about.’ Or even just a simple, _’Shut up! Mind your own business!’”_

“W—wait. Waitasec. Dude. Double D. Are you… are you _actually_ gay? Like for real?”

Double D throws his hands in the air, helpless in the face of such obtuseness. _“That’s not the point!”_

“Oh god. Man, if you’re really gay, that’s… that’s like, fine or whatever, but seriously, dude, of all the dudes you coulda picked, why _Ed?”_

Double D makes a fist, and so help him, he is ready to use it. “Not. The. _Point.”_

“Sorry, just like… whoa, y’know? It’s kind of a mind blower. I feel like I should be sitting down.”

“Whether or not I’m actually gay, and whether or not I have romantic inclinations toward Ed, _doesn’t change the fact_ that you _threw me to the wolves!”_

“Look, _I’m sorry_ about this morning, okay? And I’m _really_ sorry about Kevin! I’ll even kick his ass later, okay? But it was already out of control by the time I even realized other people were talkin’ about it! There was nothing I could do!”

“Nothing?”

“No!”

“…Really.”

Eddy makes a what-did-I-just-say gesture. “Dude.”

“Don’t be so small-minded, Eddy. You have had _ample_ opportunity to say something. Just about every day for the last _year_ you’ve had the chance to say something. _Before_ it was out of control. That’s why I now believe that you didn’t say anything this morning — not against me, but not _for_ me, either.”

“That’s not fair. You know what I’ve been dealing with.”

“What _you’ve_ been dealing with? I’m sorry, am I hallucinating or did you really just say that to me while I’m standing here with _sutures in my face?”_

“I _couldn’t risk it!”_ Eddy screams.

“What, your ‘reputation’? You couldn’t risk the opinions of those… those _jocks_ for my _safety?_ For our _friendship?”_

 _“They’re_ my friends, too!”

“You can’t have both,” says Double D.

“Uh, now who’s being small-minded?”

“That would still be _you,_ Eddy. You can’t seriously expect to be friends with someone who routinely and actively hurts someone you care about!”

“I was _not_ talking about Kevin.”

“Neither was I. But what about when Jeremy was cornering me in the locker room, or when Brian was following me down the hall screaming _’Hey faggot!’_ Or when… I don’t know their names, the two really tall blonde twins, were shoving mud into my mouth under the bleachers and making lewd accusations about my mouth and other people’s anal cavities? Because you were _there,_ and you were _watching,_ and it’s just like you said, Eddy: _you didn’t. Say. Anything._ Just as I’m sure you didn’t say anything when Kevin was in all likelihood bragging to all the other jocks this afternoon about how he beat the _daylights_ out of that faggy little _Double Dicksucker.”_

“H… hey, man…”

“No! Don’t ‘hey man’ me! Those guys used to ignore me. And Kevin used to be _nice_ to me. And then when he wasn’t anymore, he still didn’t dare push it to such an extreme, because he didn’t think he could get away with it! But all through… through _stupid_ high school, you’ve been telling him loud and clear that he _can_ get away with it. Him and everyone else! This wasn’t _sudden,_ Eddy. You took a _huuuge_ step back from me, _and_ from Ed, quite some time ago now, and ever since then, you’ve stood there whistling with your hands behind your back each and _every_ time some… some low-browed teen tyrant decided to stuff me headfirst into a garbage bin or sharpie a poorly drawn cartoon of me and another person’s phallus on my locker! That was _you,_ Eddy. That was _your_ choice. You used to _be there_ when the situation turned grim, you used to stick it out with us, _the same way we stuck it out with you_ even when everybody _hated_ us, even when _you_ were the one who made them angry! That was _who we were._ Even if no one else had our backs, _we still had each other’s._ There were still three of us. We were _the Eds._ And what’s happened to us now, I ask you?”

“Question you should be asking,” mutters Eddy, “is where being ‘the Eds’ ever _got_ us.”

Double D, so certain a few long moments ago that he’d already shed the maximum number of tears an adolescent human body can produce in a single day, backs up two full steps and just… stares, aghast, as they fill his eyes to overflowing in barely three seconds, turning the person standing on his doorstep into an unrecognizable blur.

Eddy tries to say something else, then stops.

“I should think,” says Double D, not even caring how shrilly the words squeak through his constricting throat, “that _that_ would be obvious.”

“Uh… hey c’mon, dude, I didn’t mean—“

“I think you did. I really think you did.”

“…Shit.”

Double D scrounges for some composure, and manages to turn up a shred or two. He clears his throat and swallows. “Go home, Eddy,” he says, hoarsely, and closes the door.

He turns and leans against it, rubbing his forehead.

He feels the dull thud when Eddy punches the other side of the door, and hears the muffled “Well, fuck you too!”

Shit indeed.

 

Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong.

Ed rings the doorbell. The witch is dead.

No one answers, but it sure looks like someone’s home, so he ding-dongs again. Does the Lollipop Guild let anyone join, or do you have to fill out an application? Maybe they have a yellow brick clubhouse with a big round stained-glass window that looks like a lollipop but once you go inside they’re all in fancy jackets, smoking cigars and talking about the stock market.

The door opens. 

“Oh, hi, Double D’s mom! Is Double D here?”

“He’s taking a shower,” says Double D’s mom. 

Double D sure likes showering. Maybe he’s secretly like The Mutant Murky Toad Body-Snatchers From Oilslick Pond and if he doesn’t shower all the time his human suit dries out and flakes off to reveal the hideous slimy monster lurking beneath. That used to be the kind of thing that would scare Ed, and maybe it still is, but it’s not scary if Double D has been the monster all along. If it was Eddy, that’d be scary. But Double D likes to be clean and if he was a slime monster that would be something to see. Ed laughs.

“I don’t really think he’s in the mood to see people right now,” says Double D’s mom.

“I’m not a people!” says Ed. “I’m a real boy!”

“Why don’t you come back a little later, hon. Okay?”

“Can do!”

The door closes.

Ed turns around and looks at the road. How much later is a little later? Is it the same as how long it takes Mutant Murky Double D to rehydrate the delicate latex copolymer compound of his disguise so it won’t crack when the sun touches it and expose his secret identity?

It’s raining. Double D should come outside. Ed feels plenty wet out here. If Double D wants to get wet too, he doesn’t have to use all the hot water and get yelled at for using all the hot water. Money doesn’t grow on trees you scabby little puke, but rain is free. They can go over to Rolf’s house and put all the chickens in a big puddle so they float like rubber duckies. Ed laughs. Double D can repair his human disguise _and_ they can play with chickens at the same time. Ed is a master multitasker!

Master multitasker master. That sounds funny in his head. He laughs.

The door doesn’t open.

Maybe he can go see the chickens himself until it’s a little later. Big fluffy huggable chickens with puffy chicken cheeks and Ed can wibble the little red rubber-glove thingies they have on their heads. Ed laughs. 

Chickens are great. Chickens would make Double D feel better. Double D should come outside and feel better with Ed. 

Ed stops smiling and turns to look at the door again. Is it a little later yet?

But Double D likes showers, too. That’ll make him feel better anyway by the time he comes outside.

 _Ed_ would feel better if he could see Double D feeling better right now.

But floating chickens would make Ed feel better, too. 

He turns and looks at the road. Ed loves chickens. Fat round chickens with long scratchy feet and bobbly heads that they bobble when they walk like they’re listening to polka. He doesn’t laugh. 

_Polka chickens!_

He still doesn’t laugh.

Weird.

Ed scratches his head. Maybe if he goes and actually _looks_ at the chickens he’ll be able to laugh.

Rolf isn’t home yet.

That’s okay! Ed got good at climbing over the barbed wire Rolf’s parents put up around the chicken coop. He just has to bend his legs extra far and pretend he’s getting on a horse. Sometimes his sleeve or his pants get caught on the pointy bits, but not today.

He can get four chickens into his arms at once. Today he’s going for five.

He’s still working on it when Rolf gets home and comes to open the big lock on the fence and open the door so Ed can just walk out and doesn’t have to climb back over. Rolf is a lot like Sarah. He only talks to Ed in yells and screams. But Rolf doesn’t tell mom on him and he talks kinda funny all the time anyway so when Rolf yells he turns red and squawks and sounds sorta like a chicken. Ed laughs as Rolf slams the gate behind him, and waves. “Bye, Rolf!”

“May a thousand shrieking llamas trample you in your sleep, bucking-for-a-trespassing-conviction Ed-boy!”

“See ya tomorrow! …Probably.”

Rolf’s a funny guy. Ed’s glad to know him.

He’s hungry now, and Double D’s mom is probably making dinner for him so Ed doesn’t have to worry about Double D getting enough to eat, and if Sarah’s in her room on the phone again then Ed can probably get to the fridge without getting caught. Mom’s not home until seven anymore so she can’t yell at him until seven, which means Ed has… uh, some number of time to get some food.

All the good snacks have pieces of tape on them with Sarah’s name written in purple marker. The rest is a bunch of plants and pink meat. Pink meat makes Ed’s bottom burble. He doesn’t eat pink meat anymore. Even the guys yelled at hm when they found out he did that. If the guys yell about something then it must be really bad.

There’s burritos in the freezer. Ed remembers to take the foil off before putting them in the microwave this time. He’s doing pretty good so far. “Sunrise,” says Ed. “Sunset.” Then he laughs, because when you talk to yourself you can kinda hear what you sound like a little, and Ed’s the funniest guy he knows. 

“High five for Ed!” he says, and high-fives himself as high as his hands can reach. Oh, wow. That’s pretty high. He could put things on top of the fridge now and Sarah wouldn’t be able to get to them.

No, bad Ed! It’s wrong to hide food from your baby sister. GO TO YOUR ROOM. NO LUNCH FOR YOU TOMORROW. They might make him watch _Grave of the Fireflies_ again.

No hiding food, ever, no matter what. Collect sponges, not snacks. Sponges are friends. They make water go away.

But Ed could hide things other than food. He could put his favorite comic books up there so she won’t be able to set them on fire anymore. He won’t get in trouble for that. Probably. If he doesn’t get caught.

His head’s extra itchy today.

The microwave beeps. Ed beeps back. It keeps beeping even after he opens the door. It’s like R2-D2, or Double D. It just likes to talk. Ed talks back to it in robot language until it’s done beeping. Then he pats it on its head. “Human-cyborg relations,” he says, and laughs.

He goes to the basement stairs, then stops, thinking. His room’s still really itchy. All dusty and dry and sneezy and coughy. And if the itchy powder gets on his burritos then his mouth will be itchy too and his tongue will turn into sandpaper again.

He goes outside. It’s not raining anymore but the ground’s still wet. But Double D’s garage roof sticks out so far there’s a little line of dry ground in front of the big rolly door. Ed goes over and sits down on the driveway in the dry strip. His butt’s dry but the water is still dripping off the edge of the roof and it makes his knees wet. It’s starting to get dark. 

While he finishes the second burrito — it’s crunchy where there’s still ice in the middle, and crunchy things are good for your teeth, and having good teeth is important if you’re going to become a werewolf — Ed can hear Kevin’s dad yelling all the way from Kevin’s house. They yell a lot in Kevin’s house since Kevin’s mom got cancer again and died this time, and now stuff’s always crashing and breaking. It’s a lot like Ed’s house, maybe. Except Kevin doesn’t have a baby sister, and does have a dad.

The blinds in Kevin’s front window flatten out when something big hits the window really hard from the inside. The yelling stops for a second and then Kevin comes out the front door, being very careful not to slam it. He kicks over the lawn jockey and then kicks his car’s back bumper before trying to open the car door. Hmm, locked.

Kevin yells bad words while he yanks on the door handle as if he could unlock it with his latent psychic powers which are awakened by the power of his repressed adolescent rage just like the kid from _Akira_ and _The Crab Boy of Muskegon Labs_.

Ed stands up, frowning.

Kevin puts his forehead on the car window and cries a little bit. Ed doesn’t like when people cry. Usually.

Right now he doesn’t mind Kevin crying so much.

“It was the one-armed man,” says Ed, and crosses the street.

Ed stands at the edge of Kevin’s driveway until Kevin sees him. Kevin wipes his nose and pretends not to be crying. “What do _you_ want, dork?”

“Dork?” 

“I _said_ whaddaya _want?”_

Ed looks at Kevin.

What does Ed want? Whaaat does Ed want? Many things. A tractor, a trip to Mars, a swimming pool of artisan gravy, a hug. But not right now. And none of them from Kevin.

(Ed knows what he wants. _Bad_ Ed. Ed’s always been a bad boy. But sometimes Ed _has_ to be bad in order to be good. Even Superman punches people.)

“Dude, either say somethin’ or fuck off,” says Kevin. “You’re creepin’ me out.”

Ed chooses to say somethin’. 

He raises an arm and waves. “Hiya, Kevin!” he says, and smiles, and goes up the driveway.

Kevin stands up straight and steps back from the car. Ed walks up, still smiling, and then Kevin says “Whoa man, what gives? Personal space! What’re you—“ and then Ed grabs Kevin’s head in both hands and slams it into the wing mirror on the car. The mirror casing cracks. 

Hm. Not hard enough. Ed tries again, and this time the mirror breaks too.

“Seven years of bad luck, Kevin,” says Ed. “You touched it, not me!”

Kevin starts to say something else but Ed puts him down on the ground kinda hard.

Kevin’s porch light comes on. Ed stands up straight and looks at the light, at the front door. He doesn’t wanna get yelled at by anyone’s dad, especially not Kevin’s. But no one comes outside. No one’s standing in the window. It’s getting dark and the air is blue. It must be the automatic light.

Ed shrugs, and holds onto the car with both hands for balance while he kicks Kevin and stomps on Kevin’s hands and feet. He’s not kicking very hard but Kevin is crying a lot. It feels funny doing it like that. It feels sorta good, but not really good? If Ed kicks Kevin hard enough then Kevin can’t make Double D walk into doors anymore, and that feels good, but also Kevin is crying a lot and that isn’t so good, and Kevin made Double D cry a _whole_ lot and Ed keeps thinking about that and it makes him keep stepping on Kevin, and even though he doesn’t want to, he _wants_ to. And even though it feels good a little bit, Ed is _not_ in his happy place. He can’t laugh at all. He isn’t even smiling. If you showed him a chicken he might _punch_ it. He’d feel terrible afterward but he would _do_ it, alright.

“Dude. Why?” Kevin asks, crying on the ground with his head behind the car tire. “The hell’d I ever do to you?”

Ed blinks, and bends over a little bit so Kevin’s not as far away, because Ed really, really wants Kevin to hear him. “Be nice to my friends, little mister,” says Ed, shaking a finger at him.

And then he laughs, because it’s over now and he feels okay again, and walks back to Double D’s front door. His shoes go schlop schlop schlop in all the puddles.

Ding-dong, ding-dong.

“Hi, Double D’s mom!”

Double D’s mom rubs the spot between her eyes really hard. “I will tell Eddward you’re looking forward to seeing him,” she says. “And have him come find you when he’s ready to see people. Okay, dear?”

Ed touches his bottom lip, then blinks. “Okay!”

The door closes.

Ed sits down on the front step to wait for Double D to come find him. It’ll be super easy if Ed’s right here outside the door.

The air goes from blue to dark grey and Ed flops over onto his side, and curls up, and pretends to sleep until he’s really sleeping.

 

Rarely has a long, hot shower been so little consolation.

Mother clearly overheard his argument with Eddy — really, how could she _not?_ — and has been awkwardly trying to console him without breaching the taboo topic of another’s social misfortune. She had fresh rice cakes and hot mint tea waiting for him when he finished with his shower, and suggested he spend some time in the living room watching a soothingly narrated documentary about deep-space phenomena. 

She kept her overt hand-wringing under control, but for Mother to actively suggest television, even educational television — much less as a form of self-medication! — severely belies her outward calm. She’s worried about him.

Moreso than usual for these trying times, anyway. The anxiety baseline is much higher than it used to be.

Double D’s face is swollen and pounding even under the ice packs she keeps bringing him (a fresh one from the freezer every half hour; their family has always maintained a good supply of all manner and variety of first-aid items, especially in the kitchen). The steady supply of cold against his forehead keeps his eyes hot, red-rimmed, scratchy. It’s easy to blame the ice, also, when his eyes overwater every three minutes or so to dampen his cheeks.

Every so often he scrapes the gritty salt trails off his face with fingernails and palms. They continue to re-form, relentlessly.

It’s barely eight o’clock when Mother haltingly suggests an early bedtime.

Double D is forced to agree. There’s no need to do homework before bed, even. Why not? His entire routine is reduced to rubble; may as well give in to the madness. It’s not as though he’s going to school tomorrow, or as though any of his teachers would fail to extend his assignment deadlines given the circumstanes and his impeccable academic record heretofore (and his impeccable gentlemanliness, when he eventually asks them for said extensions). Normally a cause for anxiety or grief, instead the lack of obligation leaves Double D feeling as carefree (and empty, and stretched thin, and directionless) as a runaway balloon. 

It’s still only September and yet tonight feels like the first studying-free evening of a long, well earned holiday break.

It’s still only _Wednesday._

Although, on break, the first thing he’d do, typically, would be to get together (or make arrangements to that end) with Ed, or Eddy, or both. Of course the latter is now out of the question (for… how long? _forever?_ dear lord…), and the former… requires a certain level of energy that Double D simply… doesn’t have. The weather’s still horrible, his bones feel like cardboard, emotions and sense of self are a thing of the past. It’s been one of those days that lasts a week, and he’s fairly certain that if he were ever to be physiologically capable of entering a true hibernation state at any time in his natural life, that time is now.

He settles instead for going to bed in the typical human way. More or less. He does temporarily devolve to walking his hands up the stairs ahead of him because he’s too exhausted to remain bipedal. Later on, he won’t be able to recall a single thing about the journey between the stairs and actual sleep.

The oblivion is so complete he wakes up only a second later to find it’s 4:17 a.m. and his bedsheets are rumpled and warm across his back. He hoists his shoulders up off the mattress and blinks vacantly at the headboard, at the faded SACK label, his lizard brain utterly perplexed by the deep early-morning darkness when not a moment ago he was slumping up the staircase on all fours like the wreck of a specimen he is. He hasn’t been this confused since his first few moments of recovering from the dentist’s gas.

He whips himself around to a sitting position, covers fumping to the carpet.

He can’t… he can’t be alone right now. Couldn’t tell you why. This isn’t the type of thing that he normally finds upsetting. Quite the opposite, in fact. Solitude is one of his oldest, dearest friends. But tonight is… everything’s wrong, tonight.

His room is entirely too dark, the air stale. He can still scent whiffs of the alcohol wipes he used to clean his belly two nights ago. A not-altogether-unexpected odor to stumble upon here now that he’s sporting Kevin’s handiwork for all the world to see, but if Mother is already sneaking into his room to interfere with his medical care, a parental rummage through his wastebasket no longer seems entirely outside the realm of possibility.

Sliding to his feet, Double D seals up the repurposed grocery bag in his wastebasket and carries it into the hall.

The house remains dim, colorless, and two-dimensional until he reaches the kitchen. The overhead light is on, warm and incandescent but far too bright. Father’s at the table, behind the newspaper. Double D smells orange juice and coffee.

He pads past Father and deposits his bedroom garbage into the kitchen bin; then, the kitchen bin being rather full now, ties up that bag as well and begins the arduous process of wrestling it out of the bin for disposal outside.

Father’s chairlegs scrape across the linoleum, then Father’s hand appears on the edge of the bin, holding it steady so Double D can finish removing the bag from it.

“Thank you,” says Double D, noting that even a slight blush of embarrassment introduces enough blood flow to his battered face to reawaken all the aches and agonies there.

“Couldn’t sleep?” asks Father.

“Actually, I’m fairly certain I’ve been in a coma for the last eight hours.”

“I’ll take that out for you, if you want. I need to leave soon anyway. It’s on my way.”

Double D rests the bloated bag of trash on the floor, considering. Mother might be moved to snoop through his trash, but Father wouldn’t even if you paid him, less out of respect for Double D’s privacy and more for sheer horror of bacteria. He leans the bag against the wall so it won’t topple and accepts the offer.

Double D isn’t prepared to return to his suddenly frightening bedroom yet, so he pours himself some of the orange juice while Father buses his own dishes and starts washing up at the sink. “Your mother wants me to talk to you.” 

A truly heroic effort stops Double D from spraying his orange juice all over the counter. “So I’ve been told,” he says, carefully.

“I don’t know what exactly she expects me to address,” says Father. “Whatever it is, she doesn’t think sticky notes are going to be sufficient. Something about you being too old for sleepovers? I’m not sure I agree with that exactly, but she wants you to keep your door open whenever you have guests from now on.”

“I can’t sleep with my door open,” says Double D.

“I know. She’s been worried about you lately, though. We both have. And, well. Look at you.”

He pulls his sleeping cap down over his eyes and raises the glass to his lips blindly.

“Did you have a girl in your room the other night or something?”

This time Double D can’t stop the spit-take. Orange juice and humiliation splatter _everywhere._ He jumps up and drags his cap off of his eyes and drags a paper towel over to the counter, but he forgot to tear it off the roll first, so now there’s a long line of unspooled paper toweling stretched halfway across the kitchen and the juice is dripping to the floor and he’s coughing and dissheveled and —

Father blinks in surprise, and then — so uncharacteristically it makes Double D’s heart actually _stop_ for a few seconds — laughs at the whole scene. “Oh my word,” says Father. _”Did_ you?”

 _”No!”_ Double D pauses, inhales, forces the panicked squeak out of his voice. “No,” he says. “It was just Ed.”

“Ed, huh?” Father’s tone is so very, very neutral, and that can’t be an accident.

If anything, the kid gloves make Double D feel even more vulnerable and his words scramble between his teeth in a desperate bid for self-defense. “Yes! Just Ed! Just same old Ed! We discovered parasites in his room and he required alternative lodging during treatment thereof. I found him trying to sleep in the playground and I just _couldn’t._ He’s my _best friend_ and I _hate_ the way his family treats him and _everyone_ deserves a warm bed and I _know_ it was a school night but — he _needed_ me and _maybe_ I needed _him_ and so _what_ if my bed is too small because nothing _happened!”_

He drops the wet toweling and clamps both palms across his mouth, but it’s too late. He’s blushing down to his _sternum._

Father regards him a moment. Then, preternaturally calm, he asks, “Nothing happened?”

Oh dear oh deardeardear 

“Nothing,” says Double D, forcing calm. “Absolutely nothing,” he says again, because it’s true, and truth is the backbone of reason, and reason is the soul of calm. As the orange juice continues to spread and the paper-towel banner flutters gently in the cross-breeze from the heating vent. 

The coffee maker hisses around its empty reservoir.

Absently, Father turns the coffee maker off, and leans one faux-casual hand on the counter. “So,” he says, and his voice is quite nonconfrontational, “you mean ‘something’ could, theoretically, _have_ happened? …With your friend Just Same Old Ed?”

Double D no longer has thoughts, just one great, desperate, endless scream echoing through the otherwise empty chambers of his mind. His blush takes a turn for the purple — he can _see_ it in his periphery — and even though he still has a great big literal mess to clean up, he turns and speedwalks from the kitchen. “I am not having this conversation right now,” he hears himself say (calmly, evenly, with dignity, not at _all_ like the mortified wail of a frightened teenager with a forbidden crush, certainly not).

Father catches up with him just as he reaches the stairs. “Eddward,” he says.

Double D stops, even though he doesn’t want to. He’s crying again. He hopes Father can’t tell in the dark foyer.

“I love you.”

These are not words that are supposed to make his stomach detach and fall thousands of meters into an icy abyss. And yet here we are. “I love you too, Father,” he says, because it’s true, but mostly because it’s what you’re supposed to say.

“And while I can’t say I care for his hygiene, I do care about Ed, too.”

Double D’s diaphragm twitches with a little spasm. “…What?” He turns to face Father.

A small, sad smile slips across Father’s face at the sight of Double D’s tears. “Of course. He’s a sweet boy, and he obviously loves you. You know I was sorry to hear about your fight with Eddy, and I hope he comes around, but even if he doesn’t, I want you to know that as far as I’m concerned, Ed is still absolutely welcome in this house. Day _or_ night. …As long as he wipes his feet. And keeps his fingers out of his nasal cavities. And doesn’t break any major appliances or load-bearing structures. _And_ as long as you keep the door open if you’re going to be in your bedroom with him. You can leave it cracked open a little bit, I think. Just don’t shut it all the way.”

For a long time, Double D says nothing, because he still can’t _think._

But… the lack of rational thought is… calmer, now. It’s a calmer breed of insanity. Accompanied by a wave of gratitude so inexplicably powerful it floods his eyes even more and fills his chest with a sensation not unlike drowning.

At length Double D manages to shake his head, slowly. “Father, I don’t even know if…”

Father removes his hand from the bannister and makes as though to head back toward the kitchen. “Well,” he says, “I do hope you’ll let us know once you figure it out. Okay, Eddward?”

“Um. Okay. Yes.”

“I’ll take care of the kitchen. Don’t worry about it.”

“Ye — yes, Father. Thank you.”

He’s halfway up the stairs when Father’s voice suddenly calls out, “And if you ever do happen to need help acquiring protection, with Ed or anyone else, I _implore_ you to ask me for said provisions before deciding to proceed without proper precautions!”

It takes Double D a full ten seconds before he translates the euphemisms, then buries his aching face in his hands and utters a prolonged squeal of embarrassment that doesn’t end until he’s reached his bedroom and slammed the door.

For a moment he just leans against the door, hyperventilating and feeling the doorknob jab his left kidney. Then he systematically inserts pills into his mouth and slowly drains the glass of water that lives on his nightstand, the antibiotics and painkillers from yesterday, and the gabapentin-fluoxetine-fish oil he forgot to take last night, in desperate hope that _something_ will make his brain stop screaming and running around in circles and being on fire.

Luckily, the placebo effect doesn’t require twenty minutes of metabolizing before it kicks in.

The polite knock on his bedroom door makes him jump so hard he hits the _ceiling._

Father doesn’t wait for a response before cracking open the door, but doesn’t come inside. “Eddward, I’m sorry, the time got away from me. I’ve cleaned up the kitchen but I’ll still need you to take out the trash after all. Please do it right away. And son? Try to have a good day.”

Double D is alone again before he can formulate the words to protest — the _But you promised_ and the _But it really is literally right on your way to the car_ and the _But I’m SO INJURED_ all die unspoken, and he sighs, scratching his belly through his slept-in shirt. It’s just the garbage. One of the easiest chores known to all of suburbia. Hardly worth complaining about. And dealing with the trash personally _will_ bring some nice, reassuring closure to his impulse to destroy evidence of his less savory behaviors, while simultaneously providing a logical segue to taking his shower a bit early this morning.

He does pause to change clothes and underwear first, though. Even if he’s going to change again in five minutes when he has that shower, and even if his face and body are a _disaster,_ there’s still no reason to step outside his door without freshening up at least a little. He is a human being, after all.

Plus it gives him a reason to further delay encountering a mirror, as he’s sure he looks a fright and is in no hurry to face Kevin’s handiwork head-on.

Father turned out all the lights before he left, as is per protocol, so the kitchen is dark once again, and calming. Double D holds the trash bag with both hands and wriggles his feet into his shoes without looking down. Or looking at anything in particular. The house is quiet, Mother still asleep. It’s beginning to get light outside, and when he opens the front door, he closes his eyes to feel the cool blue air coast past the skin on his neck and swirl around his body.

Hello again, world.

The trash bag blocks his view of the ground, so Double D isn’t entirely surprised when he trips over the front step and lands chin-first on the garbage. Luckily there’s nothing sharp in the bag, and it breaks most of his fall, but he lets himself whimper openly at the consistency of his misfortune as he turns himself over onto his back and checks for additional injuries. The stress-blush recenters the pain in his face once more. That’s what he _gets_ for rising to the challenge of another day’s existence with even the slightest hint of optimism anym—

Ed looks cold.

He’s in a (relatively) tiny ball, 90% of his body huddled up inside his jacket, red-nosed, teeth juddering on every exhale. Unacceptable.

Double D is up on his knees with his arms draped across Ed’s back, and the rough fabric is damp and frosty under his forearms, which is _worse._ “Ed, you need to go inside at _once!_ Core body temperature is a delicate—“ He stops. “Ed? What are you doing on my front step?”

Ed grins and sniffs, an unsanitary wet sound. “H-oh, h-h-hi, Double D,” says Ed.

Setting aside for the moment that Double D noticed Ed was cold before even noticing that Ed was _lying on his front step,_ Double D leans back a bit and pulls at Ed’s coat until he sits up.

“Did you have a good shower?” says Ed, huddling his head down inside his jacket collar.

“Shower? I just woke up. I don’t get my turn in the shower until after Mother’s gone to work.”

“Your m-m-m-m…. your m-mom said you were… in the sh-sh-sh-sh—”

“Mother?” He talked to Mother? Mother isn’t even up yet. She wouldn’t have seen or talked to Ed since… “Oh, no. Ed. You mean to tell me you’ve been sitting out here all _night?”_

“H-he sees you whe-when you’re sleeping, Double D.”

There ought to be an _oh good LORD_ speech tumbling out of Double D’s mouth now. Instead he sits on his feet, on his front walkway, at Ed’s feet, with the door gaping open and garbage on the ground and the world at large going utterly ignored all around them. He can’t seem to remove his eyes from Ed’s jacket cuffs. 

_All_ night?

One of the streetlights flickers off. 

Ed fingers the crusties from one of his eyes. “H-hey. Want to go play with Rolf’s chickens?”

 _“Ed._ All night?”

“Yep. You found me!” 

“Found you?”

Ed laughs, then reaches out a shivery hand and touches the top of Double D’s collarbone. “Tag. You’re it.”

The hand hesitates before withdrawing. It feels like a frozen bag of peas sliding off his shoulder.

Double D rubs his own elbows and they both sit in shivering silence for a moment or two.

“Your turn, Double D,” says Ed, breath clouding the air, and Double D doesn’t think he’s fooling himself that Ed sounds strangely nervous.

“I, um.” Double D looks around. “I have to take out the garbage.”

The trash is suddenly in the bin by the garage and the bin is fallen over on its side and Ed is standing tall with one foot on the hem of Double D’s pajama pants, saluting, before Double D’s had time to register any of it happening. “Anchor weighed and ready for takeoff, captain!” says Ed.

Well, at least now Double D knows why Father reneged on his promise to take the trash out for him. Who knew a parent could be so sly? Double D will need to leave a nice sticky note of thanks somewhere only Father will find it.

He begins the laborious process of getting to his feet, because he can’t think of anything else to do.

Ed lends a hand by bending down and just picking him up wholesale. And seems every bit as disinclined to set him back on his feet as Double D suddenly is to let go of Ed’s neck and shoulders.

“Mm-hm, toasty,” Ed mumbles against Double D’s ribcage. His voice tickles Double D’s skin.

Double D has to take two full breaths before he can say, “It’s rather warmer indoors.”

“Vampires are forbidden to enter a human dwelling unless invited.”

“You’re not a vampire, Ed, and you’re already invited.”

“It’s true! I am a werewolf! Vampires can suck it.” Ed chooses that moment to carry him inside, so at first Double D fails to feel Ed’s teeth against his shoulder. Ed’s muffled, content _om nom nom_ echoes subtly in the foyer.

Double D reaches past Ed’s shoulder to close the door, then, despite being gnawed on, fixes his grip on Ed with all four limbs. Thighs tight around Ed’s ribs, still expanding and contracting with easy breath despite all of Double D’s strength. White-knuckled and still straining to squeeze harder. Some kind of previously undiscovered reflex. There’s probably a word for it. There’s a word for everything. 

His vocabulary in regards to this particular field of study is woefully inadequate. He suspects the relevant answers may lie on the internet rather than in Webster’s. The finding of them will be an extended exercise in cross-references, source checking, critical thinking, and frustration.

But there is a word for everything. There are words for this. Somewhere.

And in the meantime, his body appears to have intimations of what’s going on and how to proceed — namely, cling to Ed with every ounce of meager strength in an attempt to splice their molecules together.

Ed stops using Double D’s flesh as a chew toy and squashes his entire face flat against Double D’s shoulder. “Ah-oooo,” he howls in a sort of stage whisper.

Ed would be an excellent werewolf. Werewolves would be lucky to count Ed among their numbers.

A curious silence overcomes them both.

They remain this way, unmoving save for the occasional cold chill or subtle readjustment of arms around each other, right in the middle of Double D’s household entryway, until Mother’s footsteps upstairs travel from her bedroom to the bathroom and the shower begins to hiss somewhere very far away.

“Are we late for school, Double D?”

“I’m not going to school today.”

“Huh. My calendar must be out of batteries.”

“That’s not really how…” 

“Cartoons! Cartoons good for Ed. And Edd.”

“It’s a weekday. There won’t be anything on but insipid preschooler programming.”

“Yo Gabba Gabba!”

“I’m not allowed to watch tv this early.”

“But _Ren and Stimpy,_ Double D.”

“It’s not Saturday.”

That one seems to leave Ed stumped. His eyebrow does interesting things while he looks up at Double D and tries to think.

“…Snow day?” he hazards.

“Health day,” says Double D.

Ed peels Double D off of his person and holds him out at arm’s length — Double D’s feet dangling a good meter off the floor, and Ed seeming no more burdened by Double D’s weight than the baboon seemed while holding infant Simba — and looks absolutely _anguished._ “You’re sick?”

“Oh dear. No, not sick. Not sick, Ed,” he says, strongly hoping this doesn’t awaken similar caretaking behavior as when Sarah had that cold. He points to his own face. “I just… walked into a door. Remember?”

Ed’s grip on Double D tightens uncomfortably. “I remember,” says Ed, and he unilaterally decides to cradle Double D against his chest again, one arm braced around his back and the other petting his hat. Ed wanders into the kitchen, flips on a light, rummages in the cupboards one-handed until he finds the bowls and a box of Chunky Puffs.

Double D can’t bring himself to protest. It’s impossible to relax in this… position… but Ed uses his free arm to alternate between attending to breakfast and continuing to stroke Double D’s hat. Eventually Double D allows his forehead to sink down and rest on top of Ed’s shoulder. 

“Good kitty,” says Ed, and Double D’s eyes slide shut in what could perhaps be interpreted as resignation. If you wanted to be stingy with your analysis.

Being small-boned and embarrassingly frail may, in fact, be worth it, if it means getting to be _held_ like this, after a week like _this._

He’s not confident that he’ll ever have the wherewithal to say so out loud in any context, but that’s the thing about Ed. That’s always been the thing about Ed: they don’t _have_ to say everything. They don’t even have to _understand_ everything — lord only knows how much Ed understands _anything,_ and he’s never let that stop him, lovable oaf. _(Loving_ oaf.)

Double D, for his part, is only becoming increasingly aware how little he himself understands, either. And where a friendship with Eddy requires superhuman amounts of understanding, being with Ed is… not _easy,_ nothing about people is _easy,_ but it does feel — natural? intrinsic? cosmically correct? They need only stand next to each other.

Or hold each other like small children, as the case may be. It’s an instinct both simple and gratifying to obey.

But after what seems like a reasonable length of time for a bear hug, Ed still hasn’t put him down. Or begun to eat his cereal. And is, in fact, burrowing his own face into Double D’s chest and neck, mumbling unintelligibly into the wrinkled fabric and reddened skin.

He’s rarely this subdued. 

Concerned — but not exactly _worried_ — Double D lifts a hand from Ed’s back and touches his rough-shaved head.

Ed looks up at him, blinking. Sniffs once, hastily; his sinuses are still recovering from the long night.

Double D isn’t sure what to think. He’d hesitate to assert that he’s thinking at _all._ He’s just running his palm and fingers over Ed’s head, because his buzzcut is soft and his scalp is warm and, perhaps thanks to the rain, not as foul as usual.

The weird purring noise Ed is making doesn’t hurt, either. It sounds like a strange gargle in his throat, but Double D has the advantage of being pressed tightly to Ed’s chest, which transfers the accompanying subtle rumble-vibration already echoing throughout Ed’s body directly into Double D’s bones.

Which is probably why Double D’s face has drawn so close to Ed’s.

Though it doesn’t entirely explain why he’s still closing that distance, incrementally.

(Double D’s not a complete idiot, even now with most of his brain’s energy diverted into his overexcited heart and queasy stomach. He knows. He _knows_ what he’s doing, he just doesn’t know what he’s _doing._ And he doesn’t know if Ed is interested, or is even _oriented_ to be interested, or even _knows what Double D is trying to do here,_ because according to the movies, usually by this point the other person would’ve either leaned in as well or rebuffed the entire attempt altogether, but Ed hasn’t moved, or changed expression, or stiffened or relaxed or breathed any differently or looked away or _altered his blinking pattern_ and oh my word can he really be _that_ clueless? Is this effort doomed? Is their friendship about to implode? Does Double D really ruin literally _everything_ he touches should he abort mission ABORT ABOR—)

Their lips are touching.

For a moment, everything is so blasé and anticlimactic that Double D thinks that the entire concept of kissing is the cheapest scam he’s ever heard of in his entire _life_ and he would like a refund. 

Oh dear.

Ed still hasn’t moved. At all. He’s fairly certain that at this point if nothing else then Ed’s _mouth_ should have moved at least a little, and he suddenly understands what people on tv mean when they argue about whether or not someone “kissed back”, and this is by far the most humiliating thing he’s ever done of his own free will and yet he _doesn’t want to stop_ because stopping the kiss means ending this moment means ending their _friendship_ and frankly he would rather die before that happens. He’d rather _die_ an outcast virgin with ground beef for a face and only one friend than outlive said friendship. Just… just someone come in and shoot him in the head _right now_ and save him from the consequences of his own actions. Please. _Please._

It’s involuntary (but if this is his last moment on earth then he doesn’t _care)_ when his fists wring Ed’s jacket to force him somehow closer and a swallowed, ungainly whimper that means _I’m sorry I’ve ended up needing you like this_ squeaks through his throat and out into the world. You know it’s bad when you sound desperate even to yourself.

At which point approximately sixty-two things happen at once:

Ed breathes in, quick and sharp, through his nose. Closes his eyes. Tightens his arms. Lurches up. Lurches forward. Drags Double D closer. Tilts his head. Kisses back. Hums a low tone. Flushes two and a half shades darker. Kisses back _hard._ Grabs the back of Double D’s head. Tilts Double D’s head the inverse way. Kisses back _deeply._ Trips over his feet a little and leans back against the counter for balance. Coasts his fingers up inside Double D’s hat. Scowls in concentration. Breathes in more slowly. Kisses back _artfully._ Tries to hold onto every inch of Double D’s body at once. Kisses back as if he’s been _dying_ to —

— though, as far as Double D knows, it never even occurred to Ed to try this until their mouths actually touched.

…Okay, that’s less than sixty-two things, and they weren’t _entirely_ concurrent. Everything is fuzzy, and dizzy, and all swirled together in a kind of quantum entanglement of emotion and sensation and time, and perhaps this is the feeling that inspired humankind to invent the concept of “eternity”, and if Double D found it impossible to relax before, now he has the opposite problem.

Ditto, with being cold.

Holy autonomic nervous system, Batman. Who needs boomerangs to cook all the reason and inhibition out of a human brain.

He doesn’t even notice at first that the kiss has ended. Not until he can see Ed’s mouth, and deduce that he can’t look at something if his lips are pressed to it.

“Hm. …Interesting.” Double D’s voice sounds distant, lightheaded, higher-pitched than usual, and although he probably _could_ care less, it would take a great deal more effort than he’s currently willing to expend on such triviality. 

Ed blinks up at him a few times, hands coming to rest on the small of Double D’s back, his acne-scarred face open and wondering and the absolute picture of delighted confusion. It does… unprecedented things to Double D’s heart.

In addition to other portions of Double D’s anatomy, but he’s not about to dwell on that. (Nor is he yet prepared to fully acknowledge his sudden awareness of a similar response on Ed’s part. …Later. He’ll process that later. Much later.)

Ed’s expression slowly morphs into something Double D has rarely seen on anyone, and never seen on Ed. He’s unsure how to name it; the only word near to hand is _reverence,_ but that can’t be right. It makes him too squirmy and blushy.

Kissing Ed again seems like a good solution. Softer this time, and quieter, and quicker. Just to make sure the first one sticks. There’s no delay in reciprocation. Only warmth with a touch of _heat._ Still good. Too good. Not a fluke.

When he pulls away this time, Ed only blinks twice before grinning so hard it takes in his eyes. “STILL BOYFRIENDS!” he sings at full outdoor volume.

Double D _loses_ it. He laughs himself clean out of Ed’s grip and thuds to the floor. His coccyx smarts, but that only serves to make him laugh harder. His eyes can’t hold it; tears leak at the far corners, salting his bruises.

“Wha — w — you sweet simpleton! What do you _mean_ ‘still boyfriends’?”

Ed fingers his lower lip. “Aren’t we?”

“I wasn’t aware we ever _were,_ Ed.”

He considers this, then laughs as if at a shared joke and literally handwaves the imaginary problem away. “Aw, sure,” he says. “We been boyfriends since we played house. Between seasons one and two, Double D!”

Double D blinks, then gets up from the floor and dusts off his rear end. House? Surely he can’t mean…? But it was just a fallback game, for when they were bored. And a way for them to maintain their own continuity, an equilibrium if you will, to counterbalance Eddy’s obsessive scheming, to provide some structure to the background moments he and Ed shared while Eddy was caught up in his own personal preadolescent dramas. Just an ongoing game of their own, something that they could continue playing no matter what else was going on. Something Eddy couldn’t capitalize on because he didn’t know about it. Something incorruptible. 

The fact that it was a game of _house_ was due solely to the fact that it was endlessly adaptable. (Well, that, _and_ that it was the first suggestion Ed happened to come up with.) _(And_ that Eddy wouldn’t have been very interested in joining their game, in the event that he ever discovered it, which he never did.) _(And_ that it turned out to be strangely gratifying.)

They played that game all summer long, and well into fall. “Ed,” he says, slowly, “we were _twelve.”_

“Haha, yep. Happy anniversary, dear.”

“You do know that playing house is not the same thing as dating, don’t you?”

“Aw, c’mon, Double D, I know. I watch daytime soaps too.”

“Then how did you reach the conclusion—“

He closes his eyes, sagely, and readjusts an imaginary pair of glasses. “We been dating since _after.”_

“But… still at the age of twelve.”

Ed pauses and does some math on his fingers. His nails make a velcro sound when he scratches his head. “Yeah…?”

Lovable _oaf!_

Double D attempts to sigh, but bafflingly, finds himself smiling instead. This is, in fact, his life. “Well,” he says, “I’m just glad I finally figured it out. You were way ahead of me on this one, Ed.”

“Boy, yeah. I heard of moving slow, but these cookies won’t sell themselves.”

“You hereby have my permission to make the first move on anything, going forward.” He pauses. “It might be our only hope of ever getting things done.”

“Ohh boy!” Ed manhandles him into another rib-compressing hug, and Double D’s feet say farewell to the floor once more. “BOYFRIENDS!”

When Double D gets his laughter under control well enough to remove his face from Ed’s shoulder, he says, “Yes, I believe that would be the appropriate nomenclature.”

“WE’LL LOOK SO PRETTY AT PROM! BELLES OF THE BALL!”

Mother’s footsteps are conspicuously loud coming down the stairs. “Oh my!” her voice calls from around the corner. “I certainly hope there aren’t any boys still milling about when the _school_ day starts so soon! They’re sure to be late!”

“Laaaate!” Ed thunks Double D down, turns, and sprints from the room.

Runs back in, kisses Double D sloppily on the cheek, and runs back out.

Runs back in, grabs the entire box of Chunky Puffs from the counter, and runs back out. This time the front door slams and he doesn’t return. There’s no telltale sound of a screen door ripping this time.

Mother comes into the kitchen and leans against the fridge with her arms folded and an indulgent smile on her face as she watches Double D dispose of the soggy, untouched remains of cereal.

“Good morning, Mother,” says Double D, not bothering to check his ridiculous grin.

She smiles a bit wider. Neither of them has anything else to add.

 

By the time Double D finishes his turn in the shower, the hot water tank is thoroughly empty, Double D’s pulse has returned more or less to normal, and Mother’s gone off to work. The walls look strangely bare of sticky notes, even compared to half an hour ago. None of the remaining tasks are particularly dreadful. Fold laundry. Go through the refrigerator for spoiled produce to compost. Wipe the spots off all the sink faucets in the house. Fluff the throw pillows.

Busywork. Mother and Father clearly don’t want to overtax him, but not at the expense of routine normalcy. Perhaps they felt his daily rhythm’s been interrupted enough for one week. What an unexpectedly comforting combination of validation for his recent suffering and frustrating dedication to a familial status quo that’s become simply unsustainable. 

Perhaps a conversation for another time. After he’s settled on a new therapist. And reclaimed jurisdiction over his own medications.

And… finished coming out.

And gotten used to being Ed’s boyfriend. To Ed being _his boyfriend._ To having a _boyfriend_ and that boyfriend being _Ed._ Dear lord, life takes some unexpected turns indeed. 

Nobody’s home to witness any embarrassing displays of emotion; he gigglesnorts openly every time Ed wafts across his thoughts, and is rewarded with a tingly surge of dazed, giddy delight each time. 

Depsite these little power-ups every few minutes (or every few seconds, depending on how distracted he is by whatever task is at hand), and despite the gentle workload, Double D’s energy noticeably flags just before brunch. He successfully channels the last of his remaining reserves to make himself an omelette so that he won’t have to take his painkillers and antibiotics on an empty stomach, and slides into the kitchen chair feeling like he’s coming off of the greatest all-nighter ever pulled. 

Two bites in, his phone buzzes. He debates for a while before deciding to check it, but it’s not from Eddy.

“No, Nazz, I don’t have the trigonometry assignment,” Double D says out loud, before checking to see what the text even says.

But it just says, _hey wats up w kevin?? do u kno_

“Um. He’s a homophobic _thug?”_ Double D says to the empty kitchen. _I don’t know,_ he texts to Nazz.

_he didnt show up today & [string of confusing emojis] u dindt either is sum thing up [more emojis]_

Far be it from Eddward to contribute to Peach Creek’s overimaginative rumor mill. _I’m sick at home,_ he says. A bending of the truth, but close enough to lay invasive curiosities to rest, he supposes. _Haven’t seen Kevin since yesterday,_ he adds. The truth shall set you free.

And, indeed, Nazz doesn’t respond.

He goes back to bed after breakfast, takes the doctor’s pills, and lets the opiate waves carry him out to the lonely sea of sleep. He hasn’t even started dreaming yet when he wakes up to see what that noise was, and finds that his phone has vibrated itself clean off the nightstand and is still rattling against the bedframe.

Curse these modern technologies. The sound of relentless cellphone vibrations may be considerably less obnoxious than the shrill blaring of the landline phones Mother and Father still use around the house, but the benefit gets a bit lost when the tradeoff is having to dangle his arm over the edge of the bed like a fishing line and clumsily chase after the phone with a mostly numb hand while it vibrates itself around on the floor.

Device successfully captured, Double D flops back on his bed, on the wrong side of the covers, with his limbs all out of order. Between the haze of an interrupted deep-sleep cycle and the haze of prescription painkillers, it takes four attempts to unlock the screen, and another minute or so of rubbing his blurry eyes before he can read the time (11:37 a.m.), much less the content of his twenty-two new messages. And, yes, the uncomfortable procedure of achieving consciousness does enjoy a brief, delightful, and for a moment one _hundred_ percent diverting pause while Double D remembers that _Ed is his boyfriend, Ed_ kissed _him, Double D has now been kissed, and it wasn’t like he’d presumed it would be, and he’d never allowed himself to dwell long on thoughts of what sort of kisser Ed would be and still isn’t entirely certain what adjectives to use now that he’s had the benefit of experience but upon trying to recall it he finds the details hopelessly mishmashed and is simply overwhelmed by a vague and all-consuming sensation of_ warmth _and_ quiet, _and Ed is his boyfriend_ right now, _it really actually happened and is still true now and will still be true later today and also tomorrow and eeeee!_

The texts are from… Rolf?

_what is this rolf hears_  
_the insecure bicycle one has shown sock on head ed boy the business end of his knuckles_  
_yes_  
_rolf knows this yes_  
_noodle arms ed boy cannot fight his way out of a cobweb_  
_so then wh yy_  
_is kevin interrupting rolfs peaceful study hall sanctuary time with phone hieroglyphs whining about the inadequate flavors of hospital food_  
_hhj [four hotdog emojis]_  
_ED BOY WHY_  
_you know something yes_  
_mmlklllll;;;; [goat emojis]_

Double D blinks, scrolls back up, re-reads. The thread continues to update every ten seconds or so with random combinations of goat, hotdog, and pig emojis. Rolf forgot to close the screen before putting the phone away. Again.

 _Kevin’s in the hospital?_ writes Double D, carefully noting for later consideration that whatever emotions he is experiencing right now on Kevin’s behalf, empathy is not among them.

Rolf doesn’t answer (save to continue sending him intermittent goats), so he tries Nazz. Her spelling is exhausting to decipher but she’s at lunch (and therefore available to converse) and more than willing to walk him through the purported facts as currently known.

She confirms that Kevin is in the hospital; that the damage includes, at minimum, fractured ribs and extremely broken hands; that Rolf saw Kevin’s car in the driveway this morning and it looked fine, so the injuries weren’t due to a crash; that _nobody_ knows what happened to Kevin, but _everybody_ knows he let slip the word “Eds” exactly once before clamming up completely, and won’t even tell the doctors what really happened. 

_And_ she further confirms that Eddy’s been in detention all day for assaulting one of the vending machines before first period (from the sounds of it, a noisy and violent scene witnessed by many and understood by none — though Double D has a fairly good hypothesis as to the cause, which he prudently keeps to himself) and no one has been able to see him all day, much less ask him about Kevin.

And that Double D hasn’t come back to school yet since Kevin turned him inside-out (which everyone knows about by now). Nazz doesn’t mention Ed, but then, she wouldn’t, would she? People forget about Ed. Even Eddy seems to forget about Ed half the time.

All of which leaves Double D as the only potential source of information on the scandal. Hence the influx of perplexing queries.

He thanks Nazz and politely informs her of his own ignorance on the matter.

Then sits up, too busy thinking to re-attempt sleep. Thinking, and wishing Ed’s parents would get him a phone. Because Double D would enjoy some answers as well; more than that, Double D would enjoy being able to contact Ed without crawling through the basement window.

…Sarah has a phone, though.

And Double D has her number, because Double D has everyone’s number, because when he first got the phone he went around the neighborhood asking everyone for theirs. (Except the Kankers, whose numbers still ended up in his phone anyway, even though he blocked them all after Marie sent him a very unsolicited photo involving the little Double Doppelganger doll she’d made in his image and her own shirtless body. And since bleach is too corrosive to apply directly to human eyeballs, he’d gone through after and scrubbed the entire house, including the grout in the bathroom tiles, followed by a short bout of dry-heaving, followed by a scalding shower in swim trunks using the rough side of the kitchen sponge on his skin.)

Sarah, though.

He knows she’s not allowed to use her phone during the school day or for non-emergency purposes; he further knows she ignores this rule with impunity, because she’s Sarah.

Whether she’ll actually take the time to respond to him is another matter altogether, so Double D is _extra_ polite and grammatical in composing his first text of salutations.

 _How you feeling? :(_ she asks.

Ah, excellent; she’s having one of her more human days. (She’s been having more of those in the last year or so.)

But there’s no way to know how much time she has to talk, so Double D quick-steps his way through pleasantries before getting to the matter at hand.

_[eye-rolling emoji] yeah, that was my idiot brother_

Double D reminds himself to breathe. _Pardon?!_

_i know right?? moron had BLOOD on his knuckels last nite. mom almost SAW_

He starts, then deletes, a handful of different replies — all equally flabbergasted — and Sarah adds: _don’t go around telling people ok?_

Of _course_ he’s not going to tell! _Mum’s the word,_ he says.

 _you know something don’t you double dee,_ says Sarah. And oh, he can _hear_ the syrup coating her voice.

_What do you mean?_

_i mean you know y he did it_

_I don’t_ — He stops, then slowly pumps the delete button as two adds itself to two. He knows. Of course he knows. _Why_ is such a ridiculous question. His chest feels too tight around his heart; it makes his eyes water.

Oh, Ed. 

_I simply have no idea what you could possibly be inferring,_ he says instead, sniffing once and swiping a palm across one eye.

_riiight_

He touches the bandages on his face with soft fingertips. He remembers the damp-earth smell beneath the stairwell, and the unhealthy sensation of a chill that’d taken up residence in his marrow and shaken him from the core. He remembers the coarse bumpy-smooth texture of tightly woven olive green fabric and the weight of Ed’s arm around him in the cafeteria. That foreboding face Ed made at the entire student body when they tried to gawk at Double D. That feeling of walking with his side pressed up against Ed’s, and how, even tough they were both on their feet, he still felt _held._

Ed’s… always loved holding him.

Sarah’s a perceptive individual — and if _anyone_ else on sweet planet Earth could possibly understand the intensity of being on the receiving end of Ed’s overgenerous protective impulses…

 _I had to get sutures in two different places, Sarah,_ says Double D. _The doctor had to give me narcotics for the pain. She said there’ll probably be scars. My parents are keeping me home for the rest of the week._

A pause, then. 

And Sarah says: _you know what your right, guess its a mystery. all well [angel emoji]_

_You won’t tell?_

_tell what? [angel, winky-face, sparkly rainbow heart]_

Double D’s stomach unclenches; the tightness in his chest remains, but now there’s a pleasant fuzzy tingle to it, something softer and less overwhelming. _Thank you. I owe you one._

_no you don’t. I still owe both of you_

He stares at the last line until it slowly sinks in that Sarah’s done with the conversation. 

He turns the screen off and stares at the blank black face of the device until it slowly sinks in that he’s smiling.

 

The doorbell rings at 3:15 on the dot.

“Before you say anything,” says Eddy, “I _tried_ to go hand Kevin’s ass to him after I got outta detention but couldn’t find him.” 

Double D doesn’t want to fold his arms over his chest, but here he is. He stares at the doorknob. “I may have heard something about him not coming to class today,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, turns out someone beat me to it, but he ain’t talkin’. He prob’ly had it comin’ from a lotta people, sooo…”

“Oh. Yes. That was Ed.”

It doesn’t seem to register at first. Eddy mashes his fists into his pockets. The bags under his eyes are darker than usual; when he blinks it looks actually _painful._ “Wait, what?”

“I almost didn’t believe it myself, either,” says Double D. 

Eddy makes a _pff_ sound and looks up at an interesting cloud formation. “Is it seriously that hard to believe Monobrow would have yer back?”

“That’s why I said ‘almost’. To be quite frank, it was more of a generalized doubt.”

“Yeah, I got my doubts about him, too.”

“No, I mean. I didn’t.” He inhales so deeply his ribs give a muted pop and his skin stretches beneath the gauze and tape on his belly. He scratches absently at the tape, through his shirt. “I’m not very used to the idea of anyone wanting to stick up for me,” he says. “Not like that. That’s all.”

“Hey man, I’ve totally stuc—“

“Of course you have, Eddy. Just not very often. Or very recently.” He tugs at his shirt, at his hatband. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to implicate—”

“Yeah you did.”

Double D makes a sour, sideways sort of smile. “Not on a conscious level, anyway.”

 _“That_ I’ll buy.” Eddy’s hair is all in the wrong place. Double D tightens his grip on his own elbows to stop himself from fussing it back into order.

“What I was _trying_ to say,” he says, “is that I’d never extensively entertained the idea that Ed would resort to brute violence. Even altruistically. He’s come close to it on Sarah’s behalf a few times, but—“

“What’re you talking about? Guy’s given me more bruises than—“

“Not on purpose.”

Eddy lacks an immediate response to that.

“According to my sources, the scuttlebug around school is that Kevin’s been in the hospital since last night.”

“Jesus.”

Double D huffs a small laugh. “I suppose now you can’t make good on your promise.”

Eddy stomps a foot down into a wider stance and arches his back. “Of course I can!” he declares to the lintel with a puffed-out chest. “I’ll just wait until he’s all healed up, then let him have it all over again. Break his legs, maybe. Welcome home, Kevin! POW!”

Double D palms his forehead. “Well, there goes his soccer scholarship, I suppose.”

“That’s what he _gets.”_ The words come out quick and mumbly, and that’s how Double D knows that even if Eddy finds a way to avoid the confrontation with Kevin later, right now? In this exact moment? He means it. 

How could anyone be expected to _not_ smile after that? “Why Eddy,” he says, “how positively stone cold of you.”

A short-lived, hopeful grin twists Eddy’s face. He shrugs and inspects his manicure (which is badly in need of maintenance). “Eh. There’s enough homophobia in professional sports anyway. I’d be doin’ the world a favor. He can live a nice long life of workin’ in the sporting goods section at Walmart and gettin’ hammered with his asshole buddies on the weekend. Bet all his friends’ll be gym teachers and traffic cops ’n’ shit. They’ll all whine about how hard they have it.”

“Poor lambs.”

When their eyes cautiously find each other’s faces, the moment shifts, and realigns… and becomes the past.

“Would you like to come inside?” says Double D, widening the door.

Eddy is no more conventionally attractive than Double D is, but when he smiles like that — when he _glows_ like that — oh, gosh.

Double D has some of the most beautiful people in his life.

He takes Eddy’s coat and hangs it on the peg beside his own.

“Maybe just for a minute,” says Eddy. “Whatcha got to eat?”

 

Ed has been a very, very, very very very bad boy.

He sits up straight all day in school with his hands folded on his desk, and nods very seriously a lot, and holds the door open for Miss Jacobs, and doesn’t go into the fort under the stairs at lunch.

They call him to the principal’s office and ask him questions about Kevin. “I do not know anything,” says Ed over and over and _over_ and over. No one argues with that.

The principal sends him to the guidance counselor and she asks Ed questions, and some of them are about Kevin and some of them are about Ed doesn’t even _know_ what. She says a lot of words about nothing and then looks at Ed, and Ed says very seriously and clearly “I DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING,” and then they do it all over again.

The guidance counselor sends him back to the special ed room. Miss Jacobs asks if he’s alright and leaves him alone for the rest of the day. The day is almost over anyway.

Ed is sitting at his desk with his hands folded and looking very carefully at the clock. The last bell rings and he runs through the door so hard he breaks the automatic-closing thingy that’s on top of it again. “SORRY,” he yells, but he doesn’t stop running.

Double D Double D Double D Double D

His legs feel good when he runs. And the top of him doesn’t feel so heavy. His arms feel like Jimmy’s pretty little ribbon-dancer things, and so does his jacket. It’s a nice day.

It’s good that Double D’s house is on the corner ‘cause that means he reaches it sooner and also he doesn’t have to go past Kevin’s house.

Ding-dong. Ding-dong. “Ding-DONG, Double D!” Oh wait, can he just go inside now? Do boyfriends still have to ring the doorbell? 

The door opens.

“Oh, hi boyfriend!” Ed picks him up and nuzzles his face into Double D’s stinky hat. Double D squirms and bats at Ed’s back with his tiny little mitts. “Aww, just like a little kitten.”

 _“Aiiir,”_ says Double D.

“Oh!” Ed puts him down and laughs. “There you go.”

“Shoes please, Ed,” says Double D.

Ed takes off his shoes, because he is going to be the best boyfriend he can be.

Double D turns a different color. “Shoes back on! _Shoes back on!”_

Ed looks down at his socks. He wiggles his toes. He sits on the floor and puts his shoes back on, and laughs. “Haha. Stinky,” he says.

“Hey! ‘Bout time you got here, Lumpy!”

“EDDY!” 

Eddy dodges Ed’s hug. Ed is too agile and quick for him, though, and gets him on the second try. “EDDY WE ARE BOYFRIENDS now.”

“Uh, did I get asked out?” says Eddy. “‘Cause I don’t remember sayin’ yes.”

“He means — us,” says Double D. 

“Come again?” says Eddy.

Double D stands next to Ed and touches his back. Ed’s back shivers and there’s this weird melty feeling. He bites his lower lip and enjoys it. Double D touches his back some more.

“Ed and I… are… um,” says Double D. “Together,” says Double D.

“BOYFRIENDS!” says Ed, and finds room in his arms to pick up both of them at once. This is the _best._ All the Eds in one big happy squish! Snap crackle _and_ pop! “When you stub your toe and it hurts you know—“

“Ed,” says Double D. “We’re not dating _Eddy.”_

“Aw, we’ll win him over, dear,” says Ed. “We are simply too cute to resist.”

Double D turns redder than his shirt. Ed could fry eggs on his face. He wonders if there are any eggs in Double D’s kitchen. Instead he kisses Double D loudly on that spot between his eye and his ear. “Everyone onboard the Ed Train!” says Ed, and carries them both into the kitchen, because he’s hungry now.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” says Double D.

“Do I get any say in this conversation?” says Eddy. “Hello?”

Ed gasps at the freezer. “PIZZA BAGELS!” He drops Eddy and Double D — they’re like little kitties, they will always land on their feet — and grabs the bright yellow box with both hands, and holds it up to the light that they may bask in its freezer-burned glory. “Double D,” he says. “Double D.” You have to ask before you eat other people’s things. Miss Jacobs says people feel better that way and Ed is going to make sure Double D feels as better as he can for always. “Double Deee!” But _pizza bagels_ sooo good for Ed. _“Double D can we eat them.”_

“How did those get in there?” says Double D, getting up off the floor and rubbing his butt. “Mother and Father would _never_ want me eating such—“ He takes a sticky note off the back of the box, and Eddy steals the box from Ed and takes it over to the toaster oven.

Double D smiles and puts the sticky note in his pocket and says, “You’ll both be staying for dinner, then?”

“I could eat,” says Eddy. He’s already started the toaster oven.

Ed leans his elbows on the counter and his chin on his hands, and he makes a face at Double D like the one Brock Brockerson made at Space Princess Starshine in _Asteroid Drillers 4: The Revengening_ just before the camera cut to the airlock.

Double D gulps and looks goopy and taps the tips of his pointer fingers against each other. When he finally smiles up at Ed, Ed’s heart goes b’thump really loud and his arms feel big enough to hold Double D, five chickens, and the moon.

“It’s a date,” Ed says, and laughs.

Laughing feels good.

**Author's Note:**

> Good gravy, Double D’s narrative voice is exhausting.
> 
> No one has to like this pairing or this fic, but anyone who has something against portraying an intellectually disabled character as a human being fully capable of romantic attachments and sexual attraction can get out. Likewise an autistic character. [/preemptive salt]
> 
> That said, I really do hope people like this fic and get something good out of it. Because of course I do.


End file.
